


Patient 5E81B5

by meimentomori



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Fluff and Angst, Gay Keith (Voltron), M/M, Sick Lance (Voltron), i made up a new species of alien for this, keith supporting lance, keith taking care of lance, scary space bacteria
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 15:38:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14405214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meimentomori/pseuds/meimentomori
Summary: Lance gets sick after a mission and to the rest of the team, he seems better.Except Keith knows that there's something wrong, something that could cost Lance life (and possibly his own).





	Patient 5E81B5

**Author's Note:**

> Hello hello!! This was a piece I worked on for the Klance Reverse Bang of 2018! I was blessed enough to get paired up with pepplemint over on Tumblr so if you'd like to say hello (and see the art pieces when they go up) please follow them!
> 
> This is a longer one shot, with my touch of angst, of course. A Summer's Lullaby should be out some time next week so look forward to that! <3

“Another planet liberated from Galra control!” Lance cheered once they got back into the castle, whipping off his helmet. “And, not to brag or anything but, those girls were totally into me.”

“Just because one kissed you on the cheek for saving her family doesn’t mean that she’s into you, Lance.” Pidge rolled her eyes, putting her glasses back on. “Think of it as a prize, not a gift that keeps on giving.”

Lance crossed his arms and pouted, earning laughs from the others around him. It had been a successful mission, no doubt. Lycia had been a planet enslaved by the Galra for centuries. It was at one of the furthest reaches of the boundaries of the territory that Zarkon had taken over, small enough to slip under the radar. 

The aliens that lived on this planet, the Lyrans, however, were a force to be reckoned with. Haggar had found a way to mind control them, to trick them into believing that the Galra would be their saviors and that they should join forces. In their zombie-like state, their leader agreed, sending off his citizens to be tested for their aptitude in singing their siren-like songs. 

That was what the Lyrans power was, the ability unique to their race. Singing. Like the myths of sirens that the Paladins knew from Earth, they were able to control almost anyone and anything with the melodies that they sang. Back when they were able to think their own thoughts, this benefitted their society greatly. They were able to sing others ailments away, whether it be a song of deep sleep to knock them out without drugs during surgery or uplifting tunes that eased mental illnesses in a way that nothing could replicate. 

They even used them on themselves, to improve their memory, to increase their endurance. Whatever they needed could be created, all with their voices. The Galra had noticed this, as soldiers would be sent to their planet and never return, converted by the Lyrans for good rather than evil. Their power was something that Zarkon had sought after.

And he had gained it, with Haggar’s assistance.

The battle had been simple. What was controlling them was a power source that had been installed in the center of their planet without them knowing, moderated by a few chosen soldiers after it had been built. Haggar had somehow learned how to morph quintessence with her power, to create a weapon more dangerous than anything that had ever been created in Galra history. What Haggar didn’t account for was Voltron coming back, along with the strength that it carried. 

There had been builders there when they flew in with their lions, desperately attempting to finish the shield that the witch had requested as fast as they possibly could. With their bayards, it had been a piece of cake striking all of the soldiers down. Keith was even able to make a dent with his own in the dome that contained the quintessence, much to the dismay of his teammates. They ran back to their lions before it could touch them, finishing off the destruction of it before it could ooze and infect the rest of Lycia.

Its citizens were overjoyed when they saw the lions sitting on the steps leading to the capital building of their planet, insisting on throwing them a thank you party. Shiro had done his best to convince them otherwise, saying how the princess needed them to get back so that they could continue their quests in freeing others who had been taken advantage of by the Galra just like they were. Lyran girls had talked up Lance while Shiro had been speaking to their leader, sweeping him away in a flash of long hair flowing behind them.

The rest of the team were being pushed along before they could even process what had happened. The Lyrans sprung to life around them, telling each of the Paladins stories of their planet’s history. None of them paid much attention to them, other than polite nods or appropriate responses to bits that they caught onto. Keith was impressed by the lack of weapons that they had, aside from the ones that the Galra had no doubt forced upon them. Hunk awed at the horderves sitting a top silver platters, being pushed by them too fast to take any. Pidge occasionally ran her hand across the wall as she walked, wondering what kind of material could amplify their voices in such an ambient way. Where it sounded echoey but beautiful, like every work even her team spoke were lyrics to a lullaby.

Shiro was the first to arrive at the table they had set up for the five of them. Unlike them, their leader didn’t get distracted as easily. He wasn’t first to beat Lance, of course, who was already being fed by the aliens happily. The way that he made them laugh, with his blushing cheeks and all, was something that tired Shiro. Allura had told them that there wasn’t enough time to stay. They had more missions to go on, ones that could alter the power in this war to their favor. He knew that all of them would do anything for that.

Including Lance.

“Lance.” Shiro made his voice firm and strict, the only way he knew how to deal with him when he was like this. “We have to go back to the castle. Allura needs us.”

“In a minute, alright?” Lance turned back to the girl on his right, who giggled as he winked at her. “Like I was saying, piloting Blue is great and all, but someday I’d like to settle down with someone. You know, a Mrs. Blue Lion?”

“For all you know, it could end up being a Mr. Blue Lion.” Pidge appeared by Shiro’s side, Keith and Hunk following so that they stood behind her. “Last I checked, you didn’t seem that straight to me.”

“Seeming straight and being straight are two completely different things!” Lance jumped up from his seat, slamming his hands against the table. “Sorry ladies, but I’d better be going. I’ll be sure to come back and visit soon.”

“You don’t have to go yet!” One of them pulled on his arm, with a surprising amount of strength that nearly sent Lance tumbling to the floor. “Our leader had all of this prepared especially for you and your team. You wouldn’t want to waste it, would you?”

“Not at all.” Lance glanced over at the others, who met him with looks of eagerness to escape from this banquet. “Why don’t you feed it to your people? Make it a celebration of your day of liberation! It could be a new holiday, you know?”

The two Lyrans looked up at him, with disappointed orange eyes. Lance looked down at them for a minute, contemplating if what he was doing was right. It wouldn’t be the brightest idea of his to impose on them any longer, with the ticking time bomb that Shiro seemed to be right then. Plus, he didn’t have to limit himself to just them. Before he could walk away fully, the one whose hair was a lighter shade of purple and curlier than her friend’s stood up, giving him a kiss on the cheek.

“That’s for saving my family.” She smiled, as he placed his hand on the spot she’d kissed. Her lips were soft, almost like the tongue of Lance’s cat back home. “We’ll see you again soon.”

They waved goodbye and left without much more of a fight. Keith took a moment to look them over, feeling off put by their actions. It reminded him of the mermaids that Lance had told him about, the ones who had them under their control to the point of where it was a miracle the ones who had figured out their queen’s plans had come to his rescue. Emotional manipulation. That was what Keith was thinking of. Puppy dog eyes, a kiss on the cheek, a whole table full of foods that reminded Keith of holiday dinners back home, that he’d seen on television.

He hadn’t been about to start an argument about it back then and he wasn’t willing to start one now. Besides, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with any of them. They all seemed to be in good spirits, chatting about where they were going to go next and how long it would take to get there. Lance was still hung up on the Lyran girls, gushing about them to Allura in an attempt to make her jealous. She did nothing but roll her eyes at his continued boasting, instead programming the new coordinates into the castle to the next planet they were headed to so that they would be on course for their next mission. 

“You jealous that I got all the attention back there?” Lance asked, nudging Keith’s arm. “Is that why you’re looking at me like that?”

“Like what?” Keith shoved back, not in the mood to talk. “I wasn’t looking at you any differently than I normally do. Why would I be jealous?”

“Oh, no reason.” Lance raised an eyebrow at Keith, trying to get him to say what everyone knew but him. 

The others snickered but Keith paid them no attention. While it was hilarious to them that he was still oblivious as ever to Lance’s flirtation, Keith couldn’t be more concerned about Lance. There was something about his eyes that he had never seen before. An unnatural blue that almost glowed in his irises. How the others hadn’t noticed it yet, Keith knew not. It wasn’t like he looked at Lance more than the rest of the team did. They had their daily fighting sessions and they sometimes spent extra time talking afterwards. Keith once in a while pulled up Lance’s face on the screen of his lion, just to make sure he was in position. But it wasn’t abnormal. Surely everyone looked at him that much. Right?

The other peculiarity was the drowsiness that was threatening to take over Lance’s body before he could get to his room and sleep. There was no doubt that their missions were tiring. Keith himself slept sounder than he had ever on Earth after all was said and done. Lance, on the other hand, kept his energy up well past the hours he should’ve been awake. Keith swore he could hear his pacing and humming in his dreams, echoing throughout the castle halls. For him to be yawning now was a rarity, something that Keith had only seen happen two other times. The first being their first training session together, when he pushed his limits farther than he should’ve. The second was a night that Keith couldn’t sleep, running into Lance in the kitchen. Keith didn’t go in. He stood outside and watched him cry into a glass of water, missing his family more than ever.

“I’d love to stay up and chat,” Lance yawned, practically falling with every step. “But I’m beat. I’ll be ready to fight again as soon as I wake up.”

Allura smiled and bade him a goodnight. Shiro nodded in his direction, turning back to survey the map that the princess was explaining to him. Pidge yelled a goodnight from her seat, not bothering to look up from her coding while Hunk waved at him. Keith was the only one to not say anything. He felt his body tense up with nerves, wondering if what he was about to do was too much. That it would cross their line of friendship in a way that would send Lance back into the rivalry that they had worked so hard to turn into bonding. It would always be there, no matter what. But now they were closer. 

Only Keith didn’t know just how close.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to walk with you?” Keith dashed to his side on instinct after his fifth step, letting him lean all of his weight into him. He felt warmer than he’d expected him to feel. Though Keith couldn’t decide if it was Lance or himself who felt that way. “I don’t like how much you’re tripping.”

“I’ll be fine.” Lance tried to push Keith away but he wouldn’t let him, standing with his feet firm on the ground. There was no stopping him when he had something that he wanted to do. And right now, that was making sure Lance got to bed alright. “I promise.”

“You can barely walk in a straight line.” Keith started to trudge along with Lance, much to the Blue Paladin’s dismay. “We can’t have you tripping and breaking one of your bones right before a mission, right?”

“Alright, alright.” Lance threw his hands up in defense, giving into the kind gesture. “As you wish, samurai.”

Keith suppressed a smile at the nickname. He had to admit, even sick, Lance was still as charming as ever. Both of them were silent during the walk back to Lance’s room, minus his heavy breathing. Keith didn’t know what to think of it. It seemed to be a fever of some sort, one that was exhausting Lance’s body to an extent that was more than he could handle. Saving planets had to be taxing on your immune system, no doubt, but for him to be this weak from a fever? And now, of all times? 

Somewhere along the way, Lance had moved his arm to sit around Keith’s waist, something that neither of them paid attention to. It didn’t seem out of place or out of line. It seemed normal. Lance kept his arm like this until Keith lowered him to his bed. He noticed quickly that Lance was shivering but he didn’t have the heart to pull up the sheets, crumpled down at the foot of his bed, to cover him up. Keith knew that he would as he slept and if he didn’t, he didn’t. It wasn’t his place to disturb him now. 

“Keith?” Lance asked as Keith turned to leave. His voice sounded so small, compared to the liveliness it had held only moments before. “Would you mind staying?”

Keith hesitated. He stepped back towards his bed, not knowing how to react. Lance was turned away from him, so he couldn’t tell what in the world he was thinking. Did he want him to stand beside his bed and watch over him, like some sort of stalker from a horror movie? He was holding his arms to his chest, curling up his body ever so slightly. There was something about the way he was positioned that reminded Keith of when he was younger. Nights he’d spent in bed, wondering why exactly his mom had abandoned him. That emotional tiredness that came after hours of crying or, in Lance’s case, a mysterious illness.

“Do you want me to sit at the edge of your bed?”

Lance nodded into his pillows, shifting his legs up more so that Keith could sit. He nearly tripped over his slippers that sat on the floor a few feet away from the bed. Allura had given them to them after they gathered all of their lions, as her own sort of thank you for finding them. Keith never wore his, nor did most of the others, but Lance cherished them. He’d worn them so much that Keith wondered how the blue hadn’t yet faded from them. He pulled them over to where they were with his shoes, picking them up so that he could slip them onto Lance. He laughed faintly, turning to look up at Keith.

“I said that you could sit,” Lance propped himself up with his elbows, smiling sleepily at Keith. “Not bother me while I try to sleep.”

“Sorry.” Keith looked away, down at the floor. “You looked cold, and I’m sitting on your sheets so I didn’t know if I should move and give them to you or what.”

“You know, for a hothead.” Lance let his arms fall back to his sides, staring up at the ceiling above his bed. “You’re oddly caring.”

“Thanks?” Keith chuckled nervously, unable to respond. “It’s what friends do, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Lance sighed, giving into his exhaustion as he closed his eyes. “Friends.”

Keith sat with him for a few minutes longer, just to be sure that he was asleep. It was also partially to ponder why Lance had seemed so upset at Keith calling them friends. That was what they were, wasn’t it? Unless he had been reading the situation all wrong, and that they weren’t really friends at all. Could Lance really consider him a full-fledged rival that he always had to compete with? That would explain why he asked if he was jealous earlier. He did have a habit of trying to rile Keith up every chance that he got. It was probably to show Shiro how incompetent he would be as their leader if something ever happened to him. Lance’s intentions couldn’t have run that deep. He could be smart at times, Keith admitted, but he wasn’t smart enough to show off his superiority in such a subtle way. 

Was he?

“Goodnight.” Keith whispered as he stood up to leave, glad that Lance was sleeping. “Don’t push yourself too hard tomorrow, alright?”

Keith walked out of Lance’s room and made his way to his own. He wasn’t in the mood for extra training today if Lance wasn’t up to it. It was funny how dependent he’d grown on him for support. He would never admit it to himself but it was obvious, in the way that he had lingered outside of Lance’s door before he left it for good. Everyone on the team could sense it in their dynamic, which had changed drastically from when they were first learning how to form Voltron to now. Keith couldn’t help but think about it as he laid down to rest, hoping with all of his heart that Lance would be healthier tomorrow.

\----------------------------

Keith’s wish hadn’t come true.

When he woke up to get himself ready for the day, he could feel it in the air. Something was amiss, whether he wanted to believe it or not. It was an anxious energy that surrounded him as he pulled on his paladin armor, as he combed his fingers through his hair to make sure that the bad knots got sorted out (which were hardly ever there). Even as he walked down the usually serene halls of the castle, the feeling refused to go away. Nothing stuck out to him as being wrong. There were no lights flickering or the sound of anyone screaming echoing through the halls. Everything seemed to be the exact same as it always had been and always would be. The moment he realized what was wrong was when he walked into the castle’s control room, greeted by five faces instead of six.

Lance wasn’t there.

Keith took a double take to make sure that his eyes hadn’t skipped over him. Lance could’ve come in earlier and he could’ve not been awake to see him but, judging by the expectant eyes that faded the moment he walked into the room, Keith doubted it. He walked further into the room, so that he was standing just behind Allura as she flew the castle through the cosmos, noting how even she seemed a bit more downcast than usual. That was a surprise. Keith thought that she would’ve been happy to have Lance sleeping in for a while. But today was a mission day, he figured, so she had her reasons to worry.

“Is Lance still not up?” Keith asked the others, looking to Shiro for support. “Did anyone go to check on him?”

“I don’t know.” Hunk held his arm with his hand. So Keith wasn’t the only one who felt nervous after all. “I tried to get him to come out and eat breakfast but his door wasn’t opening and I didn’t want to bother him.”

“I tried to wake him up, too.” Shiro said, concerned in his own serious way. “I know he takes longer to get up in the morning than the rest of us but this is weird, even for him.”

“Didn’t he seem a little…” Keith thought to himself for a moment, wondering how he wanted to phrase this. “Off to you last night?”

“What do you mean?” Pidge asked. “He was tired. Lance always stumbles over himself when he’s exhausted. He used to do that back at the Garrison. Not that you would know.”

Keith shook his head, “No. This wasn’t exhaustion. Didn’t anybody see how weird his eyes looked? And the fact that he was sweating even after the mission was over?”

“He didn’t look any different to me.” Allura said, ending their discussion.

Keith plopped down into his chair, watching on as his teammates scurried about to prepare for the day’s mission. He should’ve expected that none of them would understand. All that Shiro was ever focused on was whether or not they were cooperating, not if they were doing alright themselves. Keith cringed at the memories of moments when Shiro had called him out on letting his impulses get in the way of their missions. Pidge and Hunk were off in their own little world, adding upgrades to their lions or the castle faster than Keith could keep track of them. Coran stayed beside Allura, who was focused solely on ensuring that their missions were successful. Keith, deep down, cared about the well-being of everyone, despite how little he showed it on the outside.

Lance was the same way. At first, Keith had been skeptical of how much he actually cared about the rest of the team. It seemed like all that he wanted to do was hit on Allura or any other pretty alien girl that they encountered along the way. The more that Keith got to know him though, the more that he got to notice how deeply Lance cared about everything. His homesickness, constantly asking Allura just how far they currently were away from home or talking about one of his siblings and some thing that he would be missing out here. His encouragement, which sometimes sounded sarcastic but was always paired with one of his signature Lance grins. He had a heart, more of a heart than some people in the rest of the room.

It was why Keith was as frustrated as he was about their passiveness. It was like they were brushing off everything that Lance was to the team, as if he were irreplaceable. There was no way in hell that Keith would ever believe that. Not only was Lance constantly supporting them emotionally, he was the best shot on their team. His aim was unlike anything Keith had seen before. Lance had the ability to hide around corners and snipe off any Galra that threatened them in the blink of an eye. Hordes of their soldiers had fallen at his feet. Their numbers amounted to less than that of the ones Keith got, that was true, but that didn’t mean that he was any less talented. They fought with different weapons, that was all. There wasn’t a way to compare anyone’s talent when none of them were fighting exactly the same.

Keith stood up to leave the room, as silently as he could. He didn’t want to catch anyone’s attention now. Not when he knew that they would expect him to be there, even without Lance. They wouldn’t understand his intentions anyway. They’d automatically assume that he was sneaking off to train or something along those lines. It was true that Keith had done that in the past, when he was too overwhelmed with worry about the next mission to think, but they didn’t know that. All that they saw was the loner trying to escape, which made this one rather difficult on Keith’s part. His footsteps made their way to Shiro’s ears, however. His eyes darted to Keith as he was halfway to the door, clearing his throat to stop him in his tracks. Keith cursed under his breath, meeting his leader’s serious face with a bitter glare of his own.

“Where are you going?” Shiro’s scrutinizing eyes met Keith’s narrowed ones. A silent battle that the two of them were engaged in. “We need to discuss the plan for today’s mission before we get there.”

“I’m going to see how Lance is doing.” Keith grumbled back, hoping to shut him up so that he could go and get the Blue Paladin in peace. “Which is more than anyone else seems to want to do for him.”

“I’m serious, Keith.” Shiro’s tone rose sharply, Keith shrinking at the sound of it. He only acted like this when he was seriously upset. Oh well, Keith thought. Sometimes, sacrifices had to be made for the team. “We need to talk about this now.”

“And I’m as serious about getting Lance.” Keith turned to walk off, ignoring Shiro’s calling after him. “He’s a part of our team. We can’t discount that, no matter what you think of him.”

Everyone behind Keith fell silent as he marched to Lance’s room. It made no sense for them to write his sleeping in today off as some sort of a slacker move. He wouldn’t do that to them on a mission day. Lance suited up and got into his lion every single time that he needed to at the exact time that he needed to, no questions asked. They hadn’t had a problem with it since their first few weeks spent in space, which had been a problem for all of them. Adjusting from their lives back on Earth to their lives in the castle wasn’t something that they had the ability to do overnight. That didn’t stop Allura from being harsh on them which, as Keith looked back on it now, made sense. She was one of the last surviving Altean’s of her time and she needed all of the help from them she could get to defend the universe.

But now, it was someone’s turn to help Lance.

The door slid open with a hiss. Keith stepped inside, not bothering to knock or let Lance know that he was there. A moment too late he realized that it might have been a good idea to. A gasp pierced the silence, Lance throwing his covers to the end of his bed. His breathing was rapid and heavy, as if he’d just awoken from a nightmare. When his eyes found Keith, who waved and smiled slightly at Lance, his breath hitched for a moment. It made way for smaller breaths, ones that helped him get back into the swing of breathing. Keith noticed this, frowning at it. So sleep hadn’t helped him after all. It was a stretch to believe that he would heal overnight after all of the symptoms he’d been having but Keith had managed to hold onto a sliver of hope that it would have somehow been enough.

So much for that, he thought.

“Aw, you missed me, Kogane?” Lance chuckled, sitting up on the edge of his bed.“Is that why you’re here to get me instead of Allura or something?”

“No, dumbass.” Keith rolled his eyes, walking over to him and holding out his hands for him to take. “I’m here because nobody else was volunteering to come and get you. We’re close to our next mission and we need our sharpshooter to round out the team.”

“Cute.” Lance mumbled, quiet enough so that Keith couldn’t hear as he grabbed onto his hands so that he could pull him up off of his bed. 

That didn’t stop him from raising an eyebrow. “What did you just say?”

“Thanks.” Lance grinned, closing his eyes while he did. Keith felt his heart speed up. He couldn’t be getting sick himself too, could he? “Was I really asleep that long?”

“Yeah.” Keith tucked some of his hair behind his ear. “I didn’t even know if you were going to wake up at all.”

“Well, I did. So I’m not dead!” Lance turned from Keith so that he could put his armor on, only to be pulled back by one of his hands to him. Keith looked more worried than Lance had ever seen him. He felt closed off, as if he were trying to fade away into his own body. “What’s wrong?”

“Are you healthy enough to go on today’s mission?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Lance tilted his head. Since neither of them had turned on his room’s light, the darkness emphasized the brightness to his blue eyes. It looked radioactive. Like a flashlight had made its way behind each of them. “I’m fine. See?”

Lance ran across the room to demonstrate this, crashing into the wall as he did. The light turned on with such a shocking vibrancy that Keith couldn’t find his way to Lance until his eyes adjusted to it. Once they did, he knelt down by Lance’s side. He could be a handful, when it came to him wanting to show off how cool or strong he was. Now that they were closer, it was obvious to Keith just how bad off Lance was. The way he huffed and puffed, when the only time he did was after long battles or training sessions. How his hair was plastered to his forehead, with new beads of sweat forming at his hairline. Keith rested his hand on Lance’s shoulder. He felt him shaking. Whether it was from chills or some sort of pain he was in, Keith couldn’t tell.

“Are you sure?”

Keith asked it quietly and softly. He wasn’t sure himself if Lance should’ve even gotten out of bed. The state he was in was only declining as time wore on. Keith knew that the others would say that he wasn’t that bad yet. That if he could still walk, talk, and focus, it wouldn’t be a problem for him to go on their mission. He also knew that Lance would agree with them so that he could go. There wasn’t a chance in hell that he would pass up even one mission. Keith didn't even know why he would care about going on this one that much. All that they were doing was stopping another mining venture the Galra had taken up on some unnamed planet. Allura said that the next string of planets they would travel to would be the same, so it wasn’t like there would be a reward or glory that Lance would gain from going out with them today.

“I’m sure.” Lance stood up. This time, he was the one to reach out to Keith, who grabbed onto his forearms. Lance flinched at his grip, though his smile seemed to grow bigger. “Go and tell everyone that I’ll be down in five, okay?”

Keith nodded, knowing that he couldn’t do any more than that. On the plus side, now they would have Lance’s assistance during today’s mission, which meant that they could form Voltron if they needed to. The downside was that there was no way of telling how worse he would get after. Keith couldn’t even be sure that what Lance had was an illness. Nobody else seemed to show signs of getting it, even though they had all been in direct contact with him for the weeks leading up to it. What else could’ve infiltrated Lance’s immune system that was strong enough to make him as sick as he was? Keith didn’t know. He tried to forget about it as he walked down the long halls and back into the control room, putting on a false sense of strength for the rest of the team. There wasn’t any room for Keith’s emotions to get in the way.

As much as he wished that there was.

“Lance said he’ll be here in five.” Keith delivered his message as requested. “We’re going to have to go easy on him today though, alright? I’m not sure what his body can take and-”

“Don’t even think about sticking me on the sidelines, Allura.” Lance cut him off, suited up and ready to fight like nothing had ever happened. “I want to be front and center, so that you all can see my moves.”

“What moves?” Pidge snorted, closing up her laptop.

“You know, my moves.” Lance shifted his bayard into his signature gun, as bright a blue as ever. “Like this.”

He positioned it as if he were ready to shoot, aimed straight at Pidge’s laptop. Before he could, he twirled it around himself in all sorts of directions. He even went so far as to toss it above his head so that he could catch it behind his back. Lance did all of this in less than half a minute, resting the end of it on his hip in a winner’s stance at the end of it all. He bowed as Pidge started to clap slowly, soon joined by the rest of the Paladins, as well as Allura and Coran. Keith was shaking his head at it, though it did ease his nerves. Lance was acting more like himself now than he had been last night, which had to have meant something in terms of his recovery. People went to work and school all the time when they were sick. A little fever never hurt anybody.

At least, that’s what Keith would tell himself.

Allura took no time in recapping the plan that they had gone over a few days before. It was going to be the same procedure for every planet that they visited. Pidge would be the first to fly in, using her invisibility cloak to blend in to her surroundings. She would scout out the major areas that the Galra were harvesting the planet’s resources from, sharing coordinates to these places so that the others could follow her lead once the cloak wore off. At that point, they would attack with their lions, flushing out all of the soldiers and their ships on the outside. Allura had warned them multiple times that it would be almost certain that there would be more on the insides of these mines. How many, she couldn’t tell them. It was their job then to land and go after them on foot. They would seal up the entrances to these mines as soon as they got out.

“That’s all?” Lance asked after she had finished explaining. “I thought we were gonna go head to head with Zakon or something. This should be a piece of cake.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Lance.” Coran said, jumping in front of him to explain in his over the top way. “You never know what those Galra could be building. We have just enough intel to know that they are working for Zarkon, not that they’re mining. For all we know, they could be selling of these planets’ inhabitants as slaves!”

“It’s a rather unfortunate possibility,” Allura continued, with her voice far more pleasant than Coran’s. “But we have to be prepared for it. They could also very well be building weapons on them that we can’t predict the strength of. These missions are just as dangerous as any other. You have to tread carefully and always have your eyes peeled. Freeing these planets means that we’ll be able to set up new places for other races to live who’ve been displaced.”

“Which means that we’ll be able to recruit them to aid us in the future.” Shiro added. “Like Allura said, we can’t afford to make any mistakes. We’re going to have to stick together and stay focused on the mission at hand, alright?”

“Alright!” Lance cheered, eager to get into his lion. Keith thought that it was cute that he still got excited about missions, even after all this time. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

They all shouted in agreement, ready to take on whatever the universe threw at them. Keith thought that he couldn’t ask for a better team as he took the pilot’s seat in the lion, taking flight from the castle. The others took their positions around him, chattering excitedly over their helmets. Keith was the one to stay silent, staring wide-eyed at the planet they were headed to. In all of their travels across galaxies, he could never shake the feeling that he got whenever he looked at where they were headed. To think that a race of aliens might have once lived on this planet, that it was their home, and how small he was compared to it. It was a beautiful shade of purple. A deep one, just bright enough to stand out against the darkness of the sky around it. Why Zarkon wanted to taint such beautiful places with his darkness, Keith would never know.

“Alright, guys.” Pidge flew Green out ahead of them, readying the both of them for their descent into the planet’s atmosphere. “Don’t follow me until you have the coordinates appear in your lions, got it?”

A unanimous ‘got it’ resounded from the four of them, watching on as Pidge flew off by herself. Keith positioned Red so that it was closer to Blue, not wanting to leave Lance’s side now that they were here. He could hear him talking to Hunk through his helmet, about some simulation they’d failed back at the Garrison that reminded them of their mission now. Keith tuned out after that. He rarely ever wanted to relive his time there. Working with others had been something that Keith hadn’t ever considered doing back then. Solo missions he excelled in to a point where he was far above his class. It was when he had to practice simulations with a team that he messed up, unable to control himself or listen to the ones around him. All that they had wanted to do was help.

Which was why they kicked him out, for pushing people away.

“I bet that Keith was the hardest to work with in his class.” Lance laughed, though Keith didn’t know it was a joke. “Maybe that’s why he got kicked out.”

“Lance.” Keith could practically hear Shiro locking his jaw through his helmet.

“Who told you that I was hard to work with?” Keith could feel his voice threatening to break, though he kept it low enough so that it didn’t matter. “Or have I always been that way?”

“I didn’t…” Lance sighed, moving Blue closer to Red’s side, as if it would comfort him. “You’re not hard to work with. I like working with you, in fact. So whoever didn’t is getting an ass kicking from yours truly when we get back to Earth, got it?”

“Okay,” Keith smiled, though Lance couldn’t see just how big it was. Or that his cheeks were tinged with pink, something that Keith had never experienced before. To him, it was another threat of becoming ill but to Lance, it would’ve been a sign of love. “Don’t forget.”

“I won’t.”

“I hate to interrupt one of your bonding moments or whatever,” Pidge’s voice prevented them from continuing, leaving them alone with their thoughts of the other. “But the coordinates are all here. Fly in and follow my lead.”

Where the face of one of the other Paladins normally appeared in Keith’s lion was currently a map, with various different lights blinking in an assortment of colors across it. Pidge explained to them that each of them had a color to correspond to their lion. Keith’s light was parallel to Lance’s, the space between the two of them worrying him. Pidge and Hunk’s lights were closer, which relieved him slightly. They had been Lance’s friends longer than Keith had known him. They would step in to save him if something went wrong. It was what allowed Keith to part ways with Lance as they were met by Galra ship fire, flipping and twirling to avoid the lasers. He could hear Lance cursing at them under his breath, threatening ships and meeting them with a hail of lasers with a vigor that Keith had never witnessed before.

It was as if he had no fear of them. That, even if their bullets hit Blue, there was no way that they’d be able to knock them down. Keith couldn’t see Lance any longer, engaged in his own battle against the Galra. It seemed to him that, somehow, their ships had gotten faster. It made piloting Red through their rain of lasers that much harder though, since Keith had such control over his lion to begin with, it didn’t affect him. The others, he couldn’t be so sure about. Taking all of them out seemed to be an endless task. When he took one ship down, two were trailing right behind it, ready to strike him down. He managed to take them down in the end, somehow. His teammates, however, didn’t seem to be as lucky.

“My area’s all clear.” Keith said, loud and clear so that they could hear him above themselves. “Anyone need backup?”

“Go over to Lance right away!” Shiro replied instantly, with a great degree of distress. “His area’s the densest out of all of ours with Galra ships!”

“I’m coming, buddy.” Keith threw on Red’s thrusters, kicking it into high gear. “Just hold on a little longer.”

Flying across the planet seemed to be a challenge in of itself. A shadow seemed to fall across the land as he looked down at the neverending debris from the ships they’d blown to smithereens. They were their enemies, that much was true, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt to see the mass amounts of damage required to win this war and restore the universe to the time of peace that had once been. Keith felt a twinge of guilt every time he shot at another ship and watched it fall down, meeting its fallen comrades. That was the price they had to pay, the consequence of saving their beloved planet Earth and countless other races of aliens that were dragged into this mess unwillingly. War had taken its toll on Keith but he would keep on fighting, until the day that they ceased fire.

After all, in the heat of the moment, it hardly ever mattered to him what happened to the Galra.

“Keith!” Lance cried out with joy as soon as he saw the Red Lion pull up by his right. “Boy, am I glad to see you!”

“That’s a first.” Keith chuckled, shooting down a few more ships. “So this must be the center of where they mine, huh?”

“Seems like it.” Lance replied, shooting down a few more of his own.

The two of them worked in tandem, flushing out the rest of the ships without any significant problems. Blue did get hit a few times, when Lance got overzealous and bit off more than he could chew. How he believed that he could take down all of the ships in a single blow in areas of more concentration, Keith didn’t know. That was normally a move he would take on himself, knowing well that he could take it better than the others. Lance wasn’t as adept at flying in between close spaces as Keith was. It was one of his flaws when it came time to try and escape, getting caught in between the occasional ships or underneath some cave that they had to break in order for him to fly out. He was improving. It would take some time, but he would get there someday. The shadow that Keith had felt looming over himself earlier seemed to become darker and more prominent after they were done, the two of them turning their lions around. It was only then that he realized that it hadn’t been his imagination or a trick of the light.

Zarkon’s ship was right above them.

Keith froze dead in his tracks. There had been a chance that he would find them. Get sent a distress signal by one of the ones down below before they could get to them. This planet had been better armed than Allura had anticipated. It felt to him like it was a set up, a mission that seemed too easy to be true. Pidge normally was able to gather all of the information they needed to know prior to them venturing out for missions like this. A few nights ago, Keith had heard her arguing with the princess, saying that she had no idea what could be waiting for them out there. Allura had taken her hands in her’s and assured her that they would be fine, that she would be fine, and that she would come to save them if anything happened.

Like any of them would let the princess risk her life for them.

“Shiro! Pidge! Hunk!” Keith yelled into his helmet. “A little help here?”

“We’re being shot at from all directions!” Hunk yelled, his words rushed and panicked. “I don’t think we can make it over there right now!”

“Well, someone has to do something!” Keith yelled back, holding onto his lion’s controls for support. “Forming Voltron’s kind of our only option right now!”

“It doesn't have to be.” Lance said, appearing on Keith’s screen.

“What do you mean?” Keith asked, his voice wavering slightly.

The way that Lance said it made him start to panic. There was something so serious to it, a tone that Keith had never heard come out of his mouth before. Lance was the one to panic in situations like this. His voice would rise and he would cry out to the others for help. It was almost as if it wasn’t him talking. Like something had possessed him into speaking like that. Keith’s own voice echoed in his ears, from when he had tried to fight Zarkon one on one. He made the connection a few seconds too late, for out of the corner of his eye, he could see Blue accelerating towards the ship as it lowered itself down further. Keith followed him without hesitation, the two of them racing towards it at a pace that threatened both of their live. He sped up his lion more, refusing to give up without a fight. 

He would make sure that the both of them survived, no matter what it would take. 

Their race was nerve wracking, to more than just the two of them. Allura and Coran could see them from where the castle sat in the sky, even with its particle barrier engaged. She held onto his shoulder just like she used to her own father’s when she was scared, turning away so that she didn’t have to see the outcome with her own eyes. Pidge, Hunk, and Shiro doubled their pace at which they shot at the Galra ships, desperate to be by their teammates sides. What none of them had noticed was that it had been Lance who flew first. They assumed that they had made a plan together, one that had been lost in translation throughout all of the deafening sounds of battle. Only one of them knew what was truly going on. Keith had pushed everything out of his mind by that point, focused only on Blue.

It would be a close call, even if he did make it. The air around his lion seemed to be pushing against him harder than before. His controls felt like they kept sticking far more frequently now. Everything seemed to be going wrong when Keith needed them to be going right. Lance had to have been going insane. There was no way that he could think sacrificing himself for the team was the right thing to do. Keith had his points where he had stepped out of line and gone too far, but never like this. He would never try to hit the side of Zarkon’s ship with his lion. Not without trying to figure out a way to attack it first from an angle that they couldn’t see him at or scrapping all of his heat of the moment ideas, flying back to the others so that they could form Voltron.

Keith didn’t want to see Lance become the last resort. 

So he pushed himself harder. He was slightly ahead of Blue now but the Galra emperor’s ship was approaching rapidly. Beads of sweat dripped down his forehead and onto his cheeks, mixing with the tears that he hadn’t realized he had been shedding this entire time. His heart was aching, hands wishing they could just reach out and grab Lance from inside of his lion so that he was safe in his arms. Red sensed his distress. Even she knew how much Lance meant to him, so she granted him a gift. Boosters, ones bigger and more powerful than any of the other lions had, appeared on her legs. They were just enough to send him shooting ahead of Blue, to a point where Keith knew that he could make it just in time.

“Lance!” Keith yelled as he managed to squeeze in front of Blue, just before it rammed into its final destination. “What were you trying to do? Get yourself killed?”

Lance reared his lion back just before it hit Red. In his helmet, Keith listened to the sound of his heavy breathing. He swore underneath of his excessive exhales he could hear Lance’s heart racing, like the beat of a drum that thought it would never stop beating. Could hearts even beat that fast? Or was it yet another one of the symptoms, caused by his mysterious illness? Keith allowed himself a moment to regroup, laying back in his seat, watching as the the other lions circled around them. None of them said a word, letting the silence become thick and deadly among them. Lance had been one stupid mistake away from ending his own life. A mistake that would’ve cost them more than the victory that would’ve come about if he had miraculously taken down Zarkon’s ship.

Similar to the mistakes that Keith had made multiple times before. 

It was true that none of these plans were as drastic as the stunt that Lance had tried to pull but that didn’t mean anything. He was the one to get fed up with these errors, if Shiro didn’t scold Keith first. Lance was always looking out for him, in that mocking way of his. Rivals, friends, whatever they were, at the end of the day the two of them were a part of something stronger. Too strong for them to comprehend. Voltron wasn’t able to hold its own in a fight with its strength. Its strength was what fueled rebellions across the universe, what freed enslaved planets from Galra control. 

If a single one of them died or left, it would cost everyone the confidence that they were able to build up inside themselves. The confidence that sent citizens running to their aid when things went awry. The bravery that turned Galra slaves into Galra rebels, fighting back with all they had. Keith had always respected that about their mission. They were the defenders of the universe, but they were also the protectors of hope. Something so precious that it would shatter like glass and sprinkle its shards across galaxies for the people who had looked to Voltron for it would no longer feel the need for it.

Which was why, before they had time to completely calm down, Allura was calling them back to the castle. She was yelling at them to hurry. That, if they didn’t, Zarkon would come and get the castle instead of their lions. So they obeyed, zooming through the planet’s atmosphere, out of it, and into their lions’ resting place. None of them met any resistance when flying through the lasers this time. In their adrenaline rushed states, they had little time to process their thoughts aside from where they needed to fly in order to preserve their own lives. They were wormholing out of there and to somewhere far away that none of them knew as soon as they managed to climb out of their lions. 

“What the hell were you two thinking?” Shiro asked as soon as their team was back together, safe and sound. “Do you know how dangerous that was?”

“It was all my idea.” Lance responded, after seeing Keith’s guilt as plain and helpless on his face as a child. “Keith didn’t know what I was doing. He was the one who stopped me, after all.”

Keith shrunk further at the sight of Shiro’s harshness towards Lance, bordering on hostility. The tension between them mirrored that of the arguments that Keith and Lance had put behind them, though the others would bring them back up again once in a while. They had been immature, letting something as petty as a one-sided rivalry get in the way of their ultimate goal. Keith had never met Lance before then so he never had any intentions of trying to be better than him. He wanted to tell him that someday. That it had never mattered to him who was better at what. Keith had only lashed back at Lance because that was how he knew to keep people off of his back so that they wouldn’t bother to get too close to him.

Especially since he believed in Lance more than the others would ever.

Shiro couldn’t think of anything other to say than, “Don’t ever do that again.”

He went to check on the princess right after, with Hunk and Pidge in tow. They offered sympathetic smiles. Hunk even went so far as to whisper that it was just a heat of the moment decision, that everybody made mistakes. Pidge had nodded along to it, adding in her own bit of support to round it out. Lance’s hands were balled into fists, as if he were about to punch Shiro in the face and knock him out. Keith put a hand on his shoulder, offering a him a sympathetic smile. Lance seemed to soften at the sight of it. All of the tension in his body fell, though it was obvious that he was hurt. Keith understood. Shiro was his idol, practically, who Lance had looked up to since he learned his name. Someone you held that much respect for talking down to you stung more than if you barely knew who they were. If anyone knew how to console Lance after being scolded by Shiro, it would be Keith.

So he broke the silence.

“Don’t let Shiro get to you.” Keith said, squeezing onto Lance’s shoulder, who rested one of his own on top of it. “I know it’s hard when he talks to you like that but, he’s just trying to look out for you.”

“I know.” Lance replied, in such a monotonous tone that it made Keith crinkle his eyebrows with worry.

“Look, this might seem out of line but…” Keith paused. He didn’t want Lance to freeze up on him at the notion that he would be there to listen to his problems, but did he really have much of a choice? “You can talk to me about whatever’s on your mind. I promise that I’ll listen.”

“I’ll be fine, Keith.” Lance smiled gently as he pushed Keith’s hand off of his shoulder. “Worry about yourself for once, alright?”

Keith nodded, watching on as Lance walked away. It didn’t take long before he turned around and motioned for him to follow. His irises seemed to hold their supernatural glow still, which concerned Keith, but he ran to catch up to Lance despite this. It wasn’t the time to let something as miniscule as that compromise the promise to be there for Lance that he’d made. Keith didn’t walk by his side at first. He trailed a couple of steps behind Lance, feeling slightly ashamed. He really didn’t know how to talk to people as well as the others did. Keith didn’t dislike their company, but to say that he was a big fan of it wouldn’t be true, either. One on one was easier for him to handle. It was quieter, with more room for him to compose his thoughts but he lost the ability to fade into the noise of other voices if he didn’t have the energy to talk any longer.

“Would you mind if I skipped our one on one today?” Lance asked as they arrived at his room, far quicker than Keith had anticipated. “I could use some sleep.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Keith tried to smile, but only one side of his mouth lifted up, making it look more sarcastic than genuine. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Was all that Lance said before heading off to bed. 

Keith didn’t feel like sleeping right then. There was something else that he had to do first, something that mattered more than the amount of energy he had for tomorrow’s mission. If they even went on one, that was. Allura might give them all a day to recover. If she did, there wasn’t a doubt in Keith’s mind that it would be spent reevaluating which planets were safe to travel to and which ones were not. The princess would no doubt have Pidge by her side throughout all of this, both for her brain and her moral support. The two of them had grown close, closer than anyone else in the castle had to each other. Keith didn’t understand what it meant, but he caught them exchanging glances when they thought everyone else wasn’t looking. They would spend hours talking to each other in the control room. Pidge had even gone so far as to start doing her work in there, when she used to find somewhere else that wasn’t overrun by idiots, as she liked to say.

Keith wouldn’t take the matter up with Allura. She must’ve blamed herself partially, if not fully, for what Lance had done. Pidge wouldn’t be a good candidate either, as she was most likely by the princess’s side, comforting her in this time of distress. Hunk, he hadn’t even considered as an option. It was true that he had known Lance for a while, and could probably tell Keith more things about him than he would ever need to know, but Hunk was too loving for him to handle. Keith didn’t want a hug or a shoulder to cry on. He wanted facts, an explanation. Someone who Keith trusted but wouldn’t coddle him in any way shape or form. Shiro was his only option, the one person who would listen in the way that Keith wanted that wasn’t Lance himself. 

“Shiro?” Keith called out into the darkness of his room, hoping that he wouldn’t wake him. “If you’re up, can we talk?”

“It would help if I was actually in the room.” Shiro’s voice made Keith jump as he laughed, surprised that he had beat him in his race against sleep. Shiro was the earliest one to sleep out of all of the paladins, which had caused Keith to lean on Lance in his real times of need. “You’re welcome to come in.”

Keith flashed him a thankful smile, stepping out of the doorway to let him in the room first. Shiro looked at him for a moment, a bit confused, but went on inside anyways. It was a habit that Keith had picked up, among many others, that appeared strange to whoever was around to witness them. This one being no exception. Insecurity started to creep in on him, like a room with its walls closing in. Keith pushed them back before he could let them get any closer to his body, in no place to let something as petty as that interfere with his own mission. It was the polite thing to do, and the right thing to do. Shiro had the right to walk into his room first. It wouldn’t have felt right for someone as inferior as Keith thought he was to waltz in and claim the place as their own. Shiro had managed to earn Keith’s respect.

Despite it being hard to keep it as high as ever after the day’s events.

“What’s wrong?” Shiro turned to face him, with that concerned look that reminded Keith of his father. “Is this about Lance?”

“Nothing ever gets past you, does it?” Keith managed to chuckle, though it sounded forced. Anxious. He took in a deep breath. “I might be crazy but I swear his eyes are glowing. And whenever I’m near him, I can hear him breathing heavy. He couldn’t train one on one today because he said that he was tired. After what he tried to do in the battle today I can’t help but worry. I think whatever he started to get sick with might be getting worse.”

“Are you sure it isn’t you reading too much into things?” 

“What do you mean, reading too much into things?!” Keith snapped. “I think I know when to be concerned about someone’s health.”

“You know I didn’t mean it like that.” Shiro sighed, pressing his hands to his face, as if he could push all of the stress out of himself through it.

“Then what did you mean?”

Keith stared at him as he waited for him to respond. Shiro was usually the one who knew exactly what to say to Keith to get him to understand. It might not have made him feel better, or have solved the problem at hand, but, at least he could make sense out of it. Reading too much into things? Yeah, right. It wasn’t like Lance had held onto him for support after he’d been struggling to walk to his room. Keith must’ve imagined him crashing into his own bedroom wall, grabbing onto his arms so that he could pull him up off of it. There wasn’t a chance in the universe that Lance was sick and Shiro was undermining his ideas one more. His trust had diminished in Keith since their last major battle with Zarkon. Shiro probably figured that’s where Lance got the idea. Not that there was something messing with his head, making him act stranger than he ever had before.

Something that Keith would try to explain to everyone, before it became too late to save Lance.

“I’m assuming you’ve never had a crush on anybody?” The way Shiro said it seemed like it was a fact that everyone knew. Everyone but Keith, that was. “At least, not consciously?”

“I’ve never had a crush on anybody but…” Keith wanted to say that it was because he hadn’t found anybody. That he was waiting for a better time than now. He knew that neither of these would convince him, and that Shiro would probably write both of them off as some sort of pathetic defenses. “Why are we even talking about this now? I thought we were talking about Lance, not my lack of a love life.”

“It’s nothing.” Shiro tried to cover his lie with a smile, though Keith could see right through it. If he was being honest with himself, Keith didn’t really care to hear what Shiro said next. Talking about love right now was as pointless as talking about wanting to go back to Earth. Neither of them were possible. “I’ll keep a better eye on Lance tomorrow, got it? So don’t spend your time worrying as much as you are about him. Taking care of yourself right now is what’s most important, so focus on that.”

Keith nodded along to his words nonchalantly, not caring to respond. He waved to him as soon as he was done, wishing him a goodnight. The door hissed behind him as soon as he stepped out. Shiro had beamed at him when Keith had managed to thank him for his help. How he hadn’t caught on that it was a lie, he wasn’t sure. That wasn’t even what frustrated him the most as he headed off to his room for the night, unable to calm himself down enough to confront anyone else about the problem at hand. What had upset him was what he said. The second person that day to tell him that. How was he supposed to worry about himself when Lance was so obviously not okay? Was everybody just going to move on with their lives and ignore what he had done, not once questioning themselves if he was okay? Keith hadn’t wanted to yell at Shiro and he hadn’t wanted to storm out, either. Keeping his composure was practically impossible in that moment but, if he could be quick enough, he could hide his feelings.

And so Keith did. And he would, as he rushed off to his room. The only time that he allowed himself to let all of his stress, his worry, his pain out into the world, his private world. Nobody tried to stop him as he ran down the halls, feeling tears dripping down his face. Whenever he tried to wipe them away, they seemed to multiply, blurring his vision worse than they had before. His room was just around the corner. He was going to make it, before anyone else had to seem him for who he truly was. A boy, terrified to be away from the Earth he always knew. It might not have been his home, nor would it have ever felt like home, but he knew the ins and outs of how to survive on it better than the palm of his hand. His bedroom door opened and he was crawling into his bed, pulling the sheets over his head so that he could cry himself to sleep, remembering the countless times that he had done this as a child. Keith hadn’t really grown up since then.

That was when he had grown up, though he refused to realize it himself.

\----------------------------------------

Lance’s condition was worsening as their time in the castle passed.

As expected, the next day, Allura had cancelled their mission. She said what Keith had expected her to say. That it was her fault for not double checking everything to make sure that none of those planets had such heavy defenses. Pidge went to her side and wrapped her arm around the princess’ own, smiling a small, reassuring smile up at her. Lance wasn’t awake again, which didn’t bother the rest of them now that they had nothing to do for the day. It might’ve made them pissed off internally, though none of them would express it verbally. It wasn’t their place to be criticizing Lance when he wasn’t even in the room, was what Keith thought. What it really was, was that Keith was in the room. Everyone knew that if they said one wrong thing about the Blue Paladin, they’d have to put up with one rough battle with Keith, which was a battle that each of them were too tired to have.

Keith had taken advantage of this time to ask them all what they thought about Lance’s condition. None of them responded by calling him an idiot or something harsh like that. Pidge had been tempted to. Allura stopped her with a finger to her lips, a signal that the two of them had developed between themselves. They would discuss it later in private, without Keith. The responses he was met with were responses that he had expected to hear. Shiro merely asked why they were still on the topic of this, when it didn’t matter then. Hunk said that Lance was prone to doing things like that when he was sick. Apparently, he had gotten the flu back at the Garrison one time and, against all better judgement, done a simulation anyway. He crashed into practically every obstacle, which Pidge confirmed. Allura told him not to worry, that everything would sort itself out.

So Keith thanked her, thanked everyone, and made his way to the kitchen. Getting Lance food was the least that he could do to help him now. He grabbed a bowl for the each of them, taking some of whatever Hunk had left out that he had made earlier that morning and scooping it so that they were filled up over the brim. It seemed like Lance hadn’t eaten in a while. It was a common symptom when it came to any illness, but it worried him nonetheless. Keith was worrying more now that everyone had told him to stop worrying about Lance. How could they not see what was wrong with him? That he was so clearly suffering, without them to comfort him and make sure he was nursed properly back to health? Keith would take care of him, himself. He was sick of seeing their passiveness towards Lance, concerned only with him not making anymore mistakes. It was bullshit, Keith thought, that he had to be the one to act like his nurse. But the truth was, he didn’t mind it. In fact, he couldn’t wait to spend more time with Lance.

Why, he didn’t know.

“Food!” Lance cried the moment his door slid open. He was sprawled out on the floor, with one side of his face pressed against it. His position quickly changed when he noticed the bowls in Keith’s hands, scrambling to sit up instead. “And Keith? A two for one deal for not getting up?”

“What were you doing just now?” Keith asked, raising an eyebrow. He had passed the bowl of food to Lance, who was happily munching away on it. “Trying to become the floor?”

“For your information,” Lance said, patting the floor beside him so that Keith would sit down with him. “Whenever I sweat, my hair turns into a mess. So, I was trying to cool my face down so that it would stop. It doesn’t seem to be working, though. And now I’m colder than I was before.”

“Then, here.” Keith pulled off his jacket and leaned over to help Lance put it on. For once that morning, the paladin stopped shivering, something that he hadn’t been able to do since his illness had started. “Now you’ll be warmer.”

“Thanks.” Lance smiled, shoving a giant spoonful of goo in his mouth, garbling his next sentence up so that Keith couldn’t hear.

“What did you just say?” Keith put a hand around his ear, cupping it as if Lance were at distance. “Sorry, I couldn’t hear you.”

Lance groaned, “Not this again.”

Keith chuckled, quieting down so that the two of them could finish eating. Talking could wait. It gave him a chance to look at Lance, to notice if anything else was wrong. Despite Lance being able to stop shivering, things seemed to have worsened since yesterday. Sweat drenched his hair, as if they had been out training for the entirety of the morning. The glowing in his eyes was still present, such a frightening and shocking blue that it practically sent shivers down his spine. He even seemed to sway slightly, constantly leaning on Keith for support so that he wouldn’t fall. And there was the lack of appetite. It didn’t take long for Lance to stop eating. Keith looked over at his bowl in alarm. There couldn’t have been more than five bites taken out of it, and that was being optimistic. 

“Aren’t you gonna eat more?” Keith asked, resting his spoon in his bowl. He wouldn’t eat until he could get Lance to eat. His health was more important than the growling in his own stomach right then. “Haven’t you not eaten since yesterday?”

“The day before.” Lance admitted. “I skipped breakfast yesterday, remember?”

“You did eat a lot on Lycia but that doesn’t excuse not eating now.” Keith was stern. He didn’t know how else to get through to Lance the gravity of his situation. “Do you seriously think that you can’t die or something?”

“No, I…” Lance couldn’t put what he had been feeling these past few days into words that Keith would understand. That anyone would understand. Besides, worrying him more than Lance knew he already had been would be an awful idea on his part. “It’s nothing. It was one dumb mistake, alright? Don’t we all have our fuck-ups that we look back on years later and cringe about?”

“Not fuck-ups that almost cost you your life.” Keith sighed, pushing back a chunk of hair from his eyes. “What can I do to get you to eat?”

Lance thought about it for a moment. Keith could sense the deviance from where he sat, as if it radiated off of him like some sort of dark aura. Lance placed his spoon in Keith’s palm, who clutched onto it instinctively. It was loaded up with a heaping spoonful of good, piled high and ready to be eaten. His mouth was wide open, like a baby bird waiting for its mom to return to their nest with worms. Keith bit his lip, side eyeing Lance as he pushed his bowl towards his own. The two of them clinked but neither of them chipped, which was a miracle. Hunk would’ve killed them if they had.

“Are you trying to get me to do what I think you are?” Keith looked at Lance’s expectant eyes, glowing bright as ever. For a moment, Keith mistook the brightness as his excitement. Then he remembered that it was unnatural, a symptom of whatever Lance had fallen ill with. There was no way that his eyes would light up like that at the sight of him. Not a chance. “Because this is sinking low, even for you.”

“But my arms are tired.” Lance dragged out the end of ‘tired’, flopping dramatically to the floor. “And you said that you’d do anything, remember?”

“I didn’t think that would mean actually feeding you!” Keith had to fight against his own reflex to throw his arms up, watching the goo wobble on the end of the spoon. “You’re not two.”

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting someone to feed you, no matter how old you are!” Lance crossed his arms where he was, refusing to get up. “My mom used to do this all the time when I was sick, even when I got older!”

“Wow.” Keith said it as if Lance had insulted his own mother. Or, rather, lack of one. “I’m officially demoted from friend to mother. Are there any more blows you want to land on me while we’re doing this or?”

“You’re lucky I’m going so easy on you.” Lance rolled his eyes, sitting up from the floor so that he could lean closer to Keith. He whispered the next bit into his ear, sending warm shivers down his spine as he dragged out each word in the most seductive way possible. “I could think of much worse things that I could have you do.”

“Point taken.” Keith said quickly, turning back to the spoon so that Lance couldn’t see the bright red that rapidly bloomed across his face. “Open up, I guess.”

Lance obeyed, shutting his eyes. Keith snuck a glance at him while he could. He couldn’t help himself. Both in sickness and health, there was something attractive about him that Keith hadn’t seen in anyone else, ever. Lance was the first person who made him feel this way. With his thin but perfectly shaped lips, that weren’t chapped or cracked. Keith thought about what they would feel like pressed against his, though he tried to forget. There wasn’t only that to focus on. Lance’s jawline was sharp, better looking than Keith’s own (in his opinion). The way his brown hair fell on his cheeks, a few shades darker than his blemish free skin. Keith worried sometimes if Lance looked down on him for the few pimples that he carried on his face, ones that he could never get to go away. He wanted him to think the best of him, not the worst.

“What are you waiting for?” Lance asked, opening one eye. He raised an eyebrow accusingly at him, smirking a little side smirk. “Are you blushing?”

“N-No!” Keith shook his head, but he couldn’t shake away the red. “Stop rushing me! I’ve never done this before, okay?”

“You do it like this.” Lance grabbed Keith’s hand and led the spoon to his mouth, swishing the goo back and forth a few times before swallowing. “See? Easy.”

Keith went into Lance’s bowl for another spoonful, doing it just as he’d showed him. He earned an approving smiling and a thumbs up on his end, which made his heart swell with pride. Helping Lance was all that he came here to do, but Keith couldn’t help but feel like it was something more. As he fed him, they talked. And the more that they did, the more Keith realized how surface level the things that he knew about Lance really were. What he learned seemed infinite and miniscule, all at once. Lance had three siblings. Two brothers and a sister. His sister’s name was Veronica, and she was twenty years old. His brothers were Marco and Luis, twelve and eight, respectively. The Alien movies had inspired his love of space, which was why he worked hard at his regular school to get into the Garrison. 

Keith found himself exchanging facts about himself with Lance as time went on. He said that he had always loved to sit by the window and watch the sun set, then stick around for the moonrise. Lance said that he did too, the two of them talking about the names and locations of constellations they used to see above their heads back then. It was crazy to think how far or close they could be to them now. Lance’s favorite animals were sharks, while Keith’s were hippos. Keith said that he loved to warm himself by bonfires, while Lance said that he loved to cool himself down with a dip in the ocean. The two of them laughed when Keith accidentally bumped into Lance’s tooth with the spoon, with a loud clink. Keith had worried so much that he tried to pull Lance’s lip up to look, only to bump their heads instead. That had been the last bite. Which meant that there was no reason for Keith to be there anymore, with his own half-eaten bowl of food goo.

“Wouldn’t you rather finish it in here?” Lance asked as Keith stacked his bowl under his own, not placing his spoon in his bowl. “I’d love to keep you company.”

“You sure it won’t bother you?” Keith didn’t mean for it to come out so pathetic and quiet, so he added onto it. “I’m sure you’re tired.”

“I am but,” Lance yawned right then, a huge one that made his jaw click. “I’ve never heard you talk this much. Your voice is soothing.”

“Please don’t tell me that the only way you’re going to sleep is if I tell you a story.”

“Would you be willing to do that?”

Keith shrugged his shoulders, “I don’t know. Would you be willing to tell me what’s really been on your mind.”

“Never mind, then.” Lance started to take off Keith’s jacket, but he stopped him. “Don’t you need this back?”

Keith gently set down the pair of bowls on the floor, with Lance’s spoon beside them. He went over to the door, grabbing Lance’s jacket so that he could put it on. It didn’t feel wrong. It felt almost more right than his own jacket felt. It was longer than Keith was used to and smelled like Lance, which he could get used to. Whatever shampoo that he’d had Allura find for him smelled wonderful. Some soft of combination of spices with a hint of Lance’s natural scent. It was creepy to think about it like that but he had his own scent. It complimented the spices nicely, like a hint of musk. When Keith turned back around, it was with a dramatic twirl, and a perfect imitation of Lance’s flirtatious looks that he’d given the princess on multiple occasions. Lance pulled Keith’s jacket tighter around him, on the verge of shivering. He wasn’t going to let that ruin this moment. So he bit the inside of his cheek to hide it. 

“Think of it as a trade.” Keith leaned down to grab the items he needed to return to the kitchen, leaving Lance with one final smile. “See you tomorrow for training, if you feel up to it?”

“Yep,” Lance winked at Keith before crawling over and into his bed, covering himself up with his crumpled sheets. “We’re unstoppable against him!”

If only it were the same with Zarkon, Keith thought, though he kept his lips sealed. He left the room in silence. It was the one thing that he’d grown to hate in the past few days, when his thoughts couldn’t seem to stop running rampant through his mind. There wasn’t anything else that he could think about to get them to go away. Somehow, all of his thoughts were able to find their way back to Lance. It was like Keith saw him in everything that surrounded him. The empty halls, the pristinely shined floor, the loneliness he felt. All of it reminded him of how he had abandoned his suffering friend to be alone in his time of need. Keith knew that there was no way that he could help Lance any more than sleep could. Sleep meant that his body had time to rest, which meant that there was a possibility that he would recover. So, for now, Keith went straight to the kitchen in the hopes that Hunk would be there, cooking up their next meal. What he was meant with was other bowls, with remnants of green staining their shiny white innards. Washing them up couldn’t hurt. Maybe the biting pain of hot water against his currently freezing hands would snap him out of this trance and back into reality.

It didn't. When it failed, Keith knew that it would be for the best if he wore himself out training. It was the one thing that he couldn’t think during. His focus would waver otherwise and he’d miss the final blow or fail to dodge on attack. He had been training to stop, to force himself to push everything out of his mind. It seemed to have been working in his favor lately. Today was no exception. With his blade that had been given to him by his father years ago, the training robot booted up and ready to go, and the determination of a soldier blazing violently in his deep purple eyes, Keith let everything go. He landed a hit here. Dodged an attack there. Managed to fake out the robot once or twice. He even went so far as to roll underneath of it, popping up on the other side with a blow that sent him to the next level. He blew through the first five like a breeze, struggling once he got anywhere above it. This time, he’d managed to make it to level eight.

Keith’s personal best.

When he heard the number ring out from the training deck, he refused to believe it. It was what made him slip up, the robot shoving him to the ground as it claimed its victory fair and square. He had beaten level seven without Lance. That was the one they had always vowed to beat together, shaking their sweaty hands to seal the deal. The way that he had grinned at Keith that day had felt like it was the most genuine smile he had ever given anyone in his lifetime. It was the widest, toothiest, most contagious grin, that had caused Keith to break out into one of a similar caliber. It no doubt held less emotion but Lance appreciated it anyways. Since that day, he had always asked Keith where that smile was. If he would ever see it again or if it was something that had been a fluke, another way that Lance had managed to break Keith. That hadn’t been breaking. Neither of them had known it yet, but breaking wasn’t as graceful as that. It was jagged, with whatever got the worst of it shattering into millions of pieces that would take years to piece back together, if they could ever be at all.

Breaking was what Keith was doing now.

He felt as if his blade were a brick of lead that he were dragging along behind him as he forced himself to walk back to his room. The training had taken up the rest of his day, much to his surprise. Usually, Hunk would’ve come in to stop him so that he’d remember to eat something. His expression might have been too intense for such a marshmallow like boy, his soft outside bursting into flames at the sight of seeing them burning in Keith’s eyes. He couldn’t help but feel bad for Hunk. His heart was pure and golden, thought he kept his distance if he felt it was right. There wasn’t an ounce of assertiveness in his mind, when it came to respecting people’s privacy. That was a flaw in of itself. It wasn’t to say that Keith believed that you had the right to everyone else’s property at every given moment. It was that, with some people, you had to push them harder in order to get them to open up. To whittle away at their outside until whatever they were hiding underneath starting to peek through. Then it was a matter of asking the right questions. Being invasive enough to start to get to the root of the problem all while keep them restrained enough so as to not scare them off. Whether Lance liked it or not, Keith was whittling away at him, day by day.

And he wouldn’t stop until Lance gave in and told him the truth.

\-----------------------------

“Keith!” Lance shook his sleeping friend, watching as his mullet flew in all sorts of places. A giggled escaped his lips as Keith rubbed his face into his pillow, lifting it up to reveal a veil of black hair covering his view of the world. “It’s time!”

It took Keith a few moments to realize that he was awake. He tucked his hair behind his ears, making sure that now he could see what he wanted to believe was there. To make sure that it wasn’t a dream to be awoken by Lance’s smiley, teeth-chattering, face. Keith frowned when he noticed that, trying to keep it as under the radar as he could. He didn’t want to alarm Lance when he was as enthusiastic as he seemed to be now. That was the one thing that didn’t fit into the equation of what seemed to be the progression of Lance’s unknown illness. How could he be this eager to go out and train, puppy dog eyes and all, when he was so clearly worsening? Everything about him practically screamed it out to Keith. He tried to ignore it, deciding to humor him and play along as if nothing were wrong.

“Time for what?” Keith’s eyelids were half shut, on the verge of closing completely and sending him back into the void that was sleep. He groaned when he realized why Lance was most likely there. “Don’t tell me Allura planned another mission for us today?”

“That’s tomorrow.” Lance pulled Keith’s covers off of him. He blinked a few times when he didn’t feel the cold air against him, realizing that Lance’s jacket had kept him warm all night long. He had forgotten to take it off in his burnt out state, something that he wasn’t entirely mad about. Now his t-shirt would smell like Lance. “Today’s practice for that mission! I had her pair the two of us up together. Unless, you don’t want that?”

“Idiot.” Keith sat up, ruffling Lance’s hair with his fingers. It felt as damp as if he had just taken a shower. Keith knew that it wasn’t water, with the way it stuck together in greasy clumps. “It couldn’t be more perfect that way.”

Lance was grateful for his approval. He didn’t even acknowledge the fact that Keith was wearing his jacket. It might have had something to do with the fact that he was still wearing the jacket that he had loaned him last night to get him to stop shivering. If Keith was being honest, the jacket almost looked better on Lance than it ever had on him. The way it hugged his ribs was flattering, showing off his muscles in a way that it couldn’t on Keith. Not that he took a moment to stare or anything. Lance held his arms out for Keith to grab onto, this time yelping as soon as he applied any pressure to them. It alarmed Keith, his eyes snapping open as if he’d been shocked by lightning. He held Lance’s hands in his own so that they were steady enough for him to see if he had caused any damage. There was nothing. No bruises or red marks from where he’d held onto. Lance tugged on Keith’s grip, who reluctantly let his fingertips fall out of his grasp.

“Does your body ache that badly?” Keith felt himself threatening to shake from the intensity of it all. This was severe, a symptom that was entirely new to him. “Maybe we should tell Allura-”

“It’s just some body aches, Keith.” Lance’s demeanor changed in an instant. Serious and snappy, mirroring the sternness that Shiro had had with them after their mission only a few days before. “If I couldn’t fight with them, then what kind of a paladin would I be?”

“Needing to take a break to let your body recover from whatever you’re sick with doesn’t negate how powerful you are, Lance.” Keith couldn’t understand where he was coming from. Did he really not understand all of the consequences that he’d face if he kept going on like this? “How can you not be afraid of what might happen if this illness doesn’t go away?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Lance stormed to the doorway, his face fallen, turned into something grave. “But I’m going on that mission tomorrow, whether you like it or not.”

“You know I’d follow you anywhere.”

Lance sighed, shaking his head. A playful smile crossed his lips. “You know I wish you’d stop doing that.”

“Never.” Keith offered his own back, careful to not bump into Lance as he stood beside him. “Not until there’s nowhere left for us to go.”

It didn’t take long for them to fall back into their usual routine of walking and talking. This time, Keith could notice that Lance had decided to begin to lower his walls. They didn’t discuss the mission, nor did they discuss Lance’s health. They talked about each other. It felt similar to the other day over breakfast, only now, they were both awake enough to enjoy it to its fullest. Oddly, nobody else seemed to be awake. There was nothing rustling in the kitchen as they passed it, where Hunk spent the majority of his time practicing his intergalactic cuisine when they had nothing else to do. Pidge, Shiro, Coran, and Allura could have been in the control room for all Keith knew, but it didn’t seem likely. There wasn’t a time that at least one of them wasn’t wandering around the castle at about the time that Keith and Lance were heading off to their training. They would wish them good luck or give them an approving nod, then walk on their way to whatever they had been trying to get to in the first place.

“How long was I asleep?” Keith asked, after he’d caught his breath from laughing at a story Lance told him about the Christmas he’d broken an ornament on their tree back home and gotten the scar on his hand from trying to wish it back together. “Where is everybody else?”

“I woke up when you finished training last night.” Lance replied, now looking at the pace of his feet. “It was really late. Everyone’s asleep now. I figured we’d train until we have to go on tomorrow’s mission, since it takes us forever to go through the levels.”

Keith swallowed, “Do you know what level I got to last night?”

“Eight.” Lance didn’t seem too offended by it, rather emotionless. That was almost worse, Keith thought, than if he snapped at him instead. “I’m proud of you.”

Keith couldn’t respond with any more than a half-assed ‘thanks’. He didn’t want to act proud of himself when there wasn’t anything prideful about it. He had gone behind Lance’s back, no matter how unintentionally it may have been, and broken a promise they had made while he was physically unable to help him complete it. Keith still had some issues working in teams, even if he had thought that he’d sorted most of the kinks out. Whenever he seemed to straighten out one, another would appear in its place, a mass of tangles worse than the last. He refused to accept the notion of the idea that it hadn’t been his fault. He thought that he should’ve kept track of the levels when there wasn’t any way that he could have. Lance knew this. He didn’t blame him one bit. He meant what he said about being proud.

He just wished that he had been there in person to see it.

“We can get to it again today.” Lance said, trying to give Keith a bit of optimism to remedy the situation. “I believe in us.”

“I do, too.” Keith held his hand out in front of him for Lance to grab to shake. On a new promise. “This time, we’ll reach level ten.”

Lance couldn’t help but scoff, brushing his hand away. “I don’t know if I believe in us that much.”

“I do.” Keith’s voice lowered in volume significantly, dropped down to practically a whisper. “Day or night. Dusk or dawn. We’ve been here for each other since we started to get closer. I don’t think anyone on our team has as strong of a bond as we do. We could do more than they’ve ever dreamed to do.”

Lance ran across the room and grabbed his bayard, turning it into his signature blue gun. “Then let’s test that theory, samurai.”

Keith smirked at the nickname, catching his red bayard as Lance tossed it to him, turning it into his classic red sword. “I’m all for it, sharpshooter.”

The difficulty of the training robot was the same, regardless of if it were a one on one match or a pair against it. Level one was something that both of them had mastered during their first week there. Individually, of course. What they would never tell each other was the fact that they had each sat outside the doorway, peeking in every once in a while to see how they fought. Looking back on it now that they weren’t blinded by rivalry, what they could see was a loving curiosity. A curiosity that had caused Lance to ask Keith to train with him, and for Keith to accept. They took their stances side by side. Keith could tell that Lance was struggling to keep his grip on the gun, arms shaking, as if it were as heavy as a crate of wine bottles. Lance still met him with his competitive grin, finger over the trigger, read to shoot whenever he gave the signal to the system to start. Keith would fake it if Lance could.

He had been faking it for him for this long, after all.

They breezed through level one as if it had been only yesterday that they had mastered it. Lance went in with lower blasts, while Keith struck from the top. This routine that had taken them days each to perfect now took them seconds to execute. They even carried it into battle with them, using it as a method to kill of the weaker of the Galra soldiers. The ones that didn’t bother to look around them for sneak attacks, falling to the ground in their first sweep of the line of enemies approaching them. It gave them enough time to fight any of the intermediate soldiers, or the level twos, as Keith and Lance had nicknamed them. These ones knew how to fight, to an extent. Their abilities were limited to fighting one of them head on, while the other could attack from behind. Keith was the one to go head to head with them, while Lance shot them from behind. That was how they’d learned to beat the level two of the training bot, all those months ago.

Three and four had taken them a few weeks longer to understand. Three had a better ability to dodge than two did, and could sense attacks coming from behind. It would still fight the target that was closest to it, which they had learned to use to their advantage. Keith would fight it off, landing a blow somewhere on the arm or leg. Depending on where it was wounded, Lance would either shoot off the other arm that was injured or the other leg, so that it was rendered useless in a matching set. Then Keith would finish it off by stabbing it in the chest, plain and simple. It didn’t get much easier than that, but back then it had seemed impossible. Being in real combat with actual soldiers where there was no off switch if things went wrong had helped them improve their reflexes, both mentally and physically. Four would attack if it sensed incoming attacks from other angles, which meant that the fights from this point on were up to how well they knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, how well they could fight together.

Which had them zooming through levels four, five, and six without a second thought.

Seven was where they had always screwed up in the past. It knew how to trip them up. Literally. It would aim for their legs to knock them off balance. A while ago, they hadn’t known how to roll to dodge any more attacks once they were down, so that they could spring to their feet and fight it as if nothing had ever happened. It used to hurt when they fell to the floor, knocking all the life out of them like a vacuum to their souls. It felt like nothing but a thump now, another obstacle in their way of victory. What they had to be careful of was rolling into each other. In situations like these, they fought on opposite ends of their enemy, Galra soldier or not. Keith had always thought that it was him messing up their training duo, taking more stabs at the training bot than he should have, but in reality, it was Lance’s worrying that messed them up. Neither of them had been able to pinpoint the flaw. Today it simply didn’t exist. Lance shot without hesitation, not an ounce of fear in his body of messing up.

They had beaten it before it seemed like the real fight had begun.

Eight was far easier than Keith had anticipated. It seemed that all the level upgraded was the robot’s agility, something that he could match move for move. It was harder for Lance to be as agile with his gun but, he made up for the lack of it by shooting their enemy in places that helped Keith to strike with his sword. Their duo seemed stronger than before. Better. Keith kept his eye on Lance to make sure that he wasn’t overexerting himself. Not that he could tell. Battling a training robot often offered the same after effects that battling a virus did. Sweat, drenching their shirts in a pattern similar to that of rain drops, fusing together to form puddles the more that they fought. A rapidly beating heart and equally as fast breaths, ones that often left their chest aching as they cried out for oxygen. Muscle aches, from the repeated abuse they enacted upon them, breaking them so that they’d be stronger for tomorrow. 

The one thing that was Keith’s tell-tale was the blue in Lance’s eyes.

It didn’t matter that the training deck lights were almost blindingly bright. The unnatural electric blue was still there, glowing as eerily as ever. Had Lance looked in the mirror once since he’d fallen ill? He might have been too scared, Keith thought, of what was happening to him to own up to it, even if he did. He couldn’t blame Lance. Glowing eyes wasn’t exactly the safest of symptoms to have. Keith couldn’t help but feel a pit in his stomach form around the idea that it could have something to do with the change in Lance’s attitude, as subtle as it may have been. Keith could see it, even now as they were fighting. There were no hesitations on his part. Nothing that held him back from pulling the trigger, from repositioning himself to dodge. He even pushed Keith out of the way at one point so that he could finish off the job himself. Lance had always been passive when it came to head on combat. Why did he choose now to try?

Level nine had gone and went before either of them had even known what happened. They didn’t stop to celebrate, with a victorious yell or fist bump to the air. Instead, they took their positions across from each other, each of their faces covered in a mask of ferocious desire to win. What they would gain out of this wouldn’t be a trophy or a planet that they could use. It wouldn’t be self-confidence or the right to gloat. It was strength that they each sought after, which they would gain as the training bot kicked their asses throughout level ten. It was a rough battle. Lance had begun to sway now. Keith had to run to his side to prop him up a few times so that he could shoot at the training robot, stunning him for a moment so that Keith could slice his sword against it as the level changed to eleven. They failed instantly. Lance fell in front of the robot and Keith had tried to cover him, which resulted in him being slammed down to the ground. It ended before they could do anything to fight back, much to Lance’s disappointment. 

“What was that for?” He complained, out of breath from the huffing and puffing he did as he sat on the floor. “I would’ve been fine on my own if you hadn’t covered me!”

“Shooting from that angle would’ve been impossible, even for you.” Keith watched his sword transform back into his bayard, tucking it into his belt. “Try not to fall like that during our fight today, okay?”

“It’s not like I did it on purpose.” Lance pouted, turning away from Keith. “We could’ve kept going. 

“Not with the way you are now, we couldn’t have.” Keith laid down on the floor beside him, surprised that Lance hadn’t already done so. “You have to save your energy for the real battles. That’s when it counts the most.”

“Speaking of which.” Lance had collapsed onto the floor beside Keith, but he could still see the doorway from where he laid. “I think it’s about time we got ready.”

“What makes you say that?”

Standing above them, Allura cleared her throat. Pidge accompanied her, eyes narrowing beneath her rounded glasses. When they each rushed to sit up and scramble away from each other, the two of them laughed. Keith and Lance had unintentionally been holding hands as they laid there. Neither of them knew how long or how their fingers had become interlaced in the first place but it was evident in their blushing cheeks that it had been an awkward encounter. It wasn’t that they minded it. Both of them hadn’t wanted to let go when they’d realized. Around the others, it was awkward. Keith wasn’t exactly the most affectionate person, when it came to anyone, and Lance wasn’t exactly the most open about his sexuality. What Keith didn’t know was that everyone thought the way that he watched over Lance was the most affection they’d ever seen out of him, something that made them smile whenever they noticed. What Lance didn’t know was that everyone had caught on to his so obvious flirting, making the fact that he was into guys loud in clear.

“Everyone else has been ready for an hour, geniuses.” Pidge looked up to Allura, who shot a harsh look in her direction. Like a disapproving girlfriend trying to correct her date’s behavior. 

“What she meant to say was that, while we’re glad that you two took the time to train before your mission together,” Allura continued in Pidge’s place, who crossed her arms and ducked her head, trying her best to shrink away from the conversation. “We’ve arrived at our destination. All of the planets we’re travelling to happen to be in their own mini solar system. Convenient, huh?”

Keith and Lance eyed each other suspiciously. How would there just so happen to be three planets in a solar system that needed to be cleared of the Galra that inhabited them without there being some sort of catch? Keith didn’t want it to be a repeat of last time. There was no telling what could be waiting on their planet for them. New weapons that were being developed on them, Galra soldiers stronger than the ones that they had face before. They could be harboring dangerous monsters from foreign alien planets there, awaiting their arrival so that they could set them free, sniffing them out to tear them from limb to limb. Pidge checked her calculations over and over, to the point of where Keith questioned if they even looked like numbers to her anymore. She must’ve been just as cautious, if not more, since the mistakes that had been made last time. Could they trust her? Keith wasn’t willing to without some pre-battle questioning.

“I hate to be that guy in this situation but,” Keith shook all of the nerves out of his head, pushing his hair back with his hand. “Are you positive that these planets are safe for us to travel to?”

“According to my calculations, yes.” Pidge readjusted her glasses. “I’ll be going with Hunk to the one that I’ve deemed the hardest. Shiro took the one the step below that, so you should have the easiest one to disarm. Besides, Zarkon hasn’t been in contact with these planets for a while. There’s not a chance that he’ll be following us today.”

Keith opened his mouth to argue with her but couldn’t bring himself to. There wasn’t any point to it when nobody would bother to listen. He didn’t think that he asked for much from them. Not any more than anyone else with a soul should ask from any other being with one. Keith wanted respect, which was something that they had given him. Even after the mistakes that he had made, they’d sprung back, treating him like one of their own like nothing had ever happened. The times that they came up were when Keith brought them up, or they were used as an example of what not to do. Lance’s mistake would no doubt be added to this list. Keith didn’t think that it was fair. Lance had a reason to be messing up, to not be thinking straight. Though everyone else was blind to it, as if their eyes were covered by the blinds of a window, Keith wasn’t. He saw every little thing that was wrong with Lance, down to the way a pimple had started to appear on his chin from getting out of his skin care routine. He really couldn’t go more than a few days without a face mask. 

“Then, what are we waiting for?” Lance sprung to his feet, wobbling slightly before regaining his balance. His grin seemed to grow wider at the idea of almost falling, as if it were fun to him. “Let’s suit up and go!”

“Thanks, Allura.” Keith smiled a gentle smile at her. He couldn’t be more honest. “Pidge. I appreciate all that you’re doing for us.”

“You’ll keep a good eye on Lance for us, won’t you?” Allura look at him expectantly, eyes wide and full of hope. “We don’t want something to happen to him like it almost did last time.”

“I saved him then, didn’t I?” Keith felt hurt by that comment. Like they didn’t believe that he had done enough to protect his partner. “I’ll save him until he doesn’t need to be saved.”

Allura thanked him, walking off with Pidge in tow, who nodded respectably up at Keith. For once, he felt like he could breathe without fearing that something would happen to Lance. Keith had wanted to give him a talk about being careful today but, he had run off to get changed into his suit before he could get a single word in to him. That was Lance for you. Enthusiastic about everything until he burned himself out or realized how much he missed everything back home. Keith started running off to his own room to put his suit on, not quite breathing normally. He didn’t know if he should stop by Lance’s room to give him back his jacket right then. It could wait until after their mission, couldn’t it? He hung it up where his own usually hung after his armor was on him, tucking his helmet under his arm as the door to his room slid open, revealing Lance on the other side.

“That’s the fastest I think it’s taken you to get ready!” Keith was astonished. He thought that he was quick himself but Lance? It had taken him practically half of the time, considering how long it took to walk to each other’s rooms. “You must be excited, huh?”

“You could say that.” When Lance smiled, it seemed wrong. As if it were hiding some suffering underneath the surface that Keith couldn’t see. “Come on. I’m sure we’re keeping the others up.”

Keith took his place at Lance’s side, the two of them walking the way to their lions in silence. Lance looked exhausted. Dark circles had formed under his eyes in the past few nights, ones that Keith had looked over when staring at the abnormality of his glowing irises. Was Lance even going to be able to stay awake during their mission? Keith tried to talk to him, to keep his eyelids from shutting, but the responses he got were whispery, practically incoherent. The questions themselves weren’t even that hard. He asked if Lance had eaten, if he had been able to sleep when he did, if he felt like his condition was improving. Each answer seemed more unitelligable than the last. Keith had finally had it, dropping his helmet to the floor so that he could grip onto both of Lance’s shoulders. Their faces were inches apart, though Lance didn’t seemed to care. It looked as if his mind were elsewhere, in a reality far from their current one. Veins that Keith had never noticed before were crawling up the Blue Paladin’s neck, a bruising shade of purple.

“Lance!” Keith yelled at him to try and get his attention. For a few seconds longer, it seemed that Lance would never snap out of it, doomed to live out the rest of his days as a zombie that had very little to say. He shook his head a few times before realizing how close Keith was, who was alarmed at how wide his eyes had gotten at this realization. “Can you hear me now?”

“Yeah.” Lance didn’t bother to push Keith off of him. His body was so tired, and he didn’t have the energy to scream at the pain he felt shooting up his arms at his touch. “I can hear you, loud and clear.”

“Can you really go on today’s mission or do we need to get you some help for whatever this is?” Keith motioned to his face. Sweat was still pouring out of Lance’s forehead, while Keith’s had stopped ages ago. “Don’t bullshit me. This is your life, we’re talking about. You shouldn’t lose it because of some illness that you thought you could fight off on your own.”

“Would you stop worrying so much?” Lance snapped, breaking himself out of Keith’s grip. His eyes grew a shade brighter. “I’m not afraid of going out there today. Whatever happens, I know that I can handle it. You should give me that much.”

“I’ve always trusted you.” Keith whispered to himself, unknowing that Lance could hear him. 

He was walking ahead now, at a pace that was alarming to Keith, who grabbed his helmet and headed after him. This virus or whatever sure had some quirks to it. One minute, Lance could be dead tired and drained of energy, whereas the next, he could be his normal self, like there wasn’t a single thing wrong with him. His symptoms stayed with him no matter what, which confused Keith even more. When he had held his arms in his hands, the shaking had been there. It was fainter, since his arms were buried under all of their heavy paladin armor, but he could feel it nonetheless. Keith was fed up with it all. He felt like he was talking to a wall when he talked to Lance about how bad off he was getting. There wasn’t an ounce of anything in his body that wanted to give up on the hope that he might get better himself, which didn’t make any sense to Keith. Didn’t he realize that humans weren’t as strong as aliens? Their bodies weren’t accustomed to living in space, despite the castle being controlled to keep conditions that they had lived under in their homes back home. They were smaller, more fragile, weaker in every single way. They had no defenses against this strange new world they had discovered, and the curious things they discovered along the way. Lance refused to see this. He refused to see any other option than what he wanted to do.

It hit too close to home for Keith to accept.

Reaching his lion was a more lonesome venture than he’d anticipated. Without Lance by his side, Keith was fretted about at every moment. He couldn’t know if he was having any trouble breathing, if his body had started to sway from the exhaustion and aching Keith knew Lance felt. If his teeth were chattering from the nonexistent cold or if beads of sweat decorated his forehead in alarming quantities, symptoms of the fever Lance tried to deny. Reuniting outside of the castle felt like a sigh of relief. Lance hadn’t been lying. He could handle this, in his own way of his. And if he couldn’t, Keith would be there to catch him if he fell. He was his partner in defending the universe, the one person that he had to focus on keeping safe. He couldn’t keep his promise to Lance, but Keith was going to keep this one to himself. No matter what it meant for him, Lance would make it out of this mission alive.

“Whew, that’s our assignment over there?” Lance appeared on Keith’s screen, helmet on and all. “That’s the reddest planet I’ve ever seen in my life!”

It was. It had layers of shades of red to it, making it almost appear like a painting against a starry canvas. It took Keith’s breath away. Not only was it the reddest planet he’d seen, it was one of the prettiest. Clouds shifted across its atmosphere like his favorite kinds of sunsets back home. The ones that had blossomed to life in shades of red and orange, as if the entirety of the Earth’s horizon were burning. This admiration of its beauty quickly shifted into alarm. The closer Keith looked at the clouds, the more apparent it became that there were bolts of lightning hitting the planet. They were lighting up like fireworks, flashing across the red expanse faster than Keith could keep track of. Pidge hadn’t bothered to check the weather of the planet they were going to go on? He looked at Lance on his screen, whose face was serene and at peace. It was a rarity, sick or not, for him to be that calm.

“Lance, I don’t think we should go any further.” Keith said, being firm with the Blue Paladin. “That planet looks like it’s storming. If we travel there, who knows how our lions will fare?”

“Back on Earth, people drove during storms all of the time!” Lance waved off his concern just like that, not even bothering to think how detrimental it cold be to their lions machinery. “Planes even flew through them! Not all of them crashed, you know.”

“Key part of that being ‘not all’.” Keith bit his lip, contemplating what he could say to get Lance to go back to the castle. “There have been deaths associated with plane crashes during storms, you know.”

“So let’s make sure that we’re not the first ones to die of crashing their lions during a storm.” Was all that Lance replied with before shutting his screen feed off and thrusting himself into the atmosphere of the new planet. 

Keith had expected there to be turbulence as he followed on behind, but not as much as there actually was. He thought that he was going to fall out of his chair when he first entered it. The only way he had kept himself steady was gripping onto his ship’s controls for dear life. He threw on the thrusters as high as they would go, desperate to get out of the storm clouds. Was this what pilots had to fly through in their own Earth’s atmosphere? Keith had a newfound respect for those talented enough to navigate through them and keep their passengers safe. They’d be better paladins of Voltron than their current team was. Lightning was an entirely different beast altogether. Keith listened to the thunder to tell when he should look out for it, since there was delay of the sound when you were flying right next to it. There had been a few times where he had almost flown into a different bolt as he escaped another, somehow managing to keep Red from getting electrocuted by one. 

“How are you holding up?” Keith asked Lance once he was out of the worst of it, scanning around to see if he could spot him anywhere. “Where are you?”

“Over here!” Blue flew to his side from out of nowhere, bumping into Red ever so lightly. “I’m safe, so don’t go worrying your pretty little face about a thing.”

Keith rolled his eyes. Below them, he could see the entrance to where he assumed the Galra were taking refuge during the storm. They wouldn’t be as idiotic as the two of them currently were acting to fly up and fight them with their own ships. If Zarkon hadn’t contacted them in a while, they could very well never get any more as long as they lived their days out here. It was a shame that they decided to keep them outside of their mine’s opening. Keith and Lance flew down to them simultaneously, each with the same idea in mind. Blast them away, destroy any hope they had at escaping. They could have other ships stashed away somewhere, which was a given of any Galra base, but these would take up the majority of their fleet. It took them five minutes tops, landing their lions down a few feet beyond the mess that they had made as soon as they were finished. It wasn’t so far that it would take them that long to walk to the entrance, nor escape if they had to make a quick run for it.

“What’re you planning today, sharpshooter?” Keith asked, having to shout above the chaos around them. The wind whipped against their helmets, the two of them fighting against it as they walked closer to the mine’s entrance. “Snipe out the weak ones then see what we do from there?”

“You know me too well.” Lance laughed, turning his bayard into a gun as they each stood on either side of the hole the Galra had drilled into a crevice in this planet.

Lance poked his head to look inside, gun pointed inwards. He rapid fired a rain of bullets upon them, knocking out the weakest ones first. It took him a few swipes back and forth but, soon enough, he was waving for Keith to follow him inside. With all of the Galra soldiers by his feet, an air of eeriness fell about the hall. How long would it take more of them to come after Keith and Lance? Neither of them knew. They were careful not to trip over the ones that had fallen as they raced down the hall, eager to get their mission over with before the storm outside worsened. Keith had a slight bit of hope within him that it would pass by the time they were finished with everything, so that their flight out of the atmosphere would feel as serene as it looked like it would’ve been, had he not taken a closer look at it.

Lance stopped him all of a sudden, raising a finger to his lips. He had started to try and take a right at the end of the hall, only for him to realize that there were Galra soldiers down there. They hadn’t spotted him, thankfully. Keith looked at Lance, at the glowing blue that was blazing in his eyes as they wordlessly explained the plan to him. They had developed looks like this in their time training together, ones that they knew the meaning of when no one else did. It wasn’t something that Keith could explain. It was almost a feeling that he got from Lance whenever he face him, something that gave off the idea of what their plan was and fed it right into his mind. Soon enough, Keith was racing at the Galra soldiers, with Lance by his side. He took on the right while his partner took on the left, stabbing them with the flick of his wrist. 

It hadn’t always been this easy for the two of them to infiltrate a base. The first time they had done it together, they had had to teach each other their signals. They had needed hand motions back then, signals that hadn’t gone well at all. It took Keith a while to catch onto their meaning and, once he did, Lance was completely disappointed in him. Now they knew how to attack, how to formulate a plan without drawing any unwanted frustration or attention to themselves. Keith turned his blade and sliced through a line of their necks, rendering them headless. Their bodies fell to the floor. That was the last of his side. Lance, on the other hand, wasn’t having as easy of a time. A group of them had circled him, one of them managing to get a hold of his gun. Keith’s heart dropped in his chest. Lance could dodge attacks but he wasn’t good in hand to hand combat. None of them were against the Galra soldiers, who were practically invincible when put against the strength of a human. 

“I’m coming, Lance!” Keith said, slicing through the crowd. Lance managed to grab onto his gun, charging off in the direction of yet another hallway. This wasn’t a part of their plan. “Where are you going?”

“One of them snuck this way to tell the others that we’re here!” Lance shouted back, blasting his way through another wave of soldiers. “You’ll be able to hold things down here, won’t you?”

“That’s not the point!” Keith was breathless, removing his sword from the last Galra that had attempted to kill his friend. “Can you handle them all yourself?”

“Of course I can!” Lance cocked his gun and shot at some soldiers Keith’s couldn’t see, down a hallway that was to the right of the one he was currently in. “I’m Lance Mcclain, sharpshooter extraordinaire! There isn’t a Galra soldier here that’s talented enough to beat me!”

Keith couldn’t get another word in as he dashed off. There wasn’t any point in going after him. Lance had his moments where he needed to be headstrong. He would lead them back to Keith if he needed backup, who would swoop in and save the day like his knight in shining armor. The idea of that didn’t sound too back right then to him, but he had to stay focused. Galra soldiers could come down this hall at any moment from the other side of the mine, attempting to get to whatever was down the other halls. Keith sat down in the ground, next to the entrance of the hall. Every once in a while, he’d peek down it. Nobody came, much to his surprise. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then twenty. Keith couldn’t even hear footsteps in the distance, nor the blasting of Lance’s gun. This place was pretty sound tight, for somewhere that was just meant to be a mine. So Keith figured that he was safe to go after Lance, to aid him in any way that he could.

He didn’t expect Lance to send a bullet through his chest.

“Shit!” Lance yelped, making his way to Keith’s side. His hand was covering the wound, blood pouring out of it. “Do you think you can walk?”

“What do you think?” Keith hissed, pressing his hand harder onto his chest. Blood seeped through the space between his fingers, in an endless river of red. “You fucking shot me. Of course I can’t walk.”

“You don’t have to be a dick about it.” Lance mumbled, picking up Keith so that he cradled him in his arms. They couldn’t get any closer than this. “I thought that you were a Galra soldier. You stand like them, you know.”

“When you knew that I was waiting in this room for you?” Keith flinched. Adjusting himself to fit comfortably into Lance’s arms hadn’t been the greatest idea. “Were you that afraid that you had to shoot?”

“That’s the problem.” Lance sighed, starting the trek back to their lions. “I wasn’t afraid at all.”

Keith felt like there wasn’t enough room in his lungs to give him enough breath to respond. Was that why Lance had gone charging off into the center of their quintessence mine, leaving him behind? Was he really not afraid of what would happen to himself, let alone, what would happen to Keith? A mission really had been the dumbest decision they could’ve made right then. Allura had told him to keep Lance safe but that was impossible when he was like this, acting on impulse more than knowing his limits of what he should do by himself. Why had everybody else neglected to see that Lance wasn’t acting rationally anymore? That he’d lost all sense of himself, because of whatever those Lyrans had infected him with. Keith was sure that that was the source of all of their problems. Lycia. A planet that Keith would make sure Lance never went back to.

If he lived, that was.

His chest felt like it was being stabbed over and over again. How a single laser could do that to someone’s skin, Keith knew not. The blood had seemed to start to slow down. It was practically impossible to tell, however, since there had been so much of it pouring out during the initial shock of him being shot. Keith didn’t care, in his haze of suffering, what happened to him. He didn’t want to live for himself. He wanted to live so that he didn’t have to leave behind Lance in the rest of the team’s caring, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to realize what was wrong with him before it was too late to save him. The thought horrified Keith, of one of the others going into his room to try and wake him up, only to find his corpse in his bed instead. Lance was taking his time to work his way out of the maze of halls. Keith knew that this wasn’t out of laziness or anything of that sort. Lance’s body was in pain and Keith was aggravating it, with every step that he took.

Getting through the inside of the mine was far easier than the outside. Keith knew this much. Outside, the storm had worsened. There was no rain, as there never was on any planet that they’d visited before. Lightning seemed to strike almost as fast as rain fell on Earth. Keith watched it hit the ground, listening to the thunder roar right behind. There wasn’t a delay like he’d expected there to be. This lightning was right in front of their eyes, and could strike them down at any moment. He instead decided to focus on Lance, the only person keeping him from letting himself give into death. A ray of sunshine in the storm brewing around them. His breaths were deeper now, desperately trying to keep as much air in his lungs as he could. Their lions would be too far away for them to get to at this rate. The wind plucked Lance’s helmet off of his head, carrying it away before he could reach out and grab it. Lance’s eyebrows furrowed, forehead wrinkling.

“I can’t carry you anymore!” Lance yelled at Keith after he was on the ground. He coughed after this, down onto his armor. Blood appeared on the edge of his mouth, alongside the other stains he’d earned from carrying Keith. One on his chest plate and some on his forehead. Tears began to form in the edges of his eyes. “I-I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

His hands were on Keith’s arms, holding onto him for support. His eyes were mad, still the sickening electric blue that he had grown to hate. Where were the beautiful sea blue eyes of the boy he once knew? The one who would never, ever, think about compromising the mission because he wasn’t afraid. The one who would hide behind Keith because he was, holding onto his shoulders like the scaredy cat character that died first in a horror movie. The one who trusted Keith more than he trusted himself because he felt that he could never compare to the sheer talent that Keith possessed. Lance wasn’t even Lance. He was something that was self-destructive, something that didn’t know how detrimental it was to its own health. He was becoming whatever had infected him, letting it take over his body. There wasn’t anything Keith could do for him now.

Except call someone else to save them. 

“Allura...We’re not doing too good here...We could use some back up,” Keith whispered it quietly into his helmet, hoping that Lance wouldn’t ask him what he said.

He could hear her take a deep breath from inside of it. Lance had given up on trying to be strong. He fell to the ground at Keith’s side, grazing his chest wound in the way down. His eyes were still blinking but everything else fell limp about him. He reminded Keith of one of those baby dolls with the eyes that blinked whenever you shifted them about. It was ominous to have him laying beside him, especially when Keith had no idea what was happening on the other planets. What if the rest of their team was already dead and they were the last two alive? What if they died and there was no one left to take over? Keith tried to shake his head, to shake these doubts out of it, only to yelp in pain from the wound. His eyelids had started to feel heavy a few minutes ago. Now they felt like he had to close them or he’d waste the rest of his energy trying to keep them open. So he shut them, feeling everything around him fade to darkness. The thunder and wind sounded soothing, almost. Keith couldn’t feel anything else as dangerous in this moment. There was nothing more fatal than death itself. He had just enough energy left to speak. To say what he’d wanted to say to Lance since he’d realized it, though he knew he’d never hear it. 

“I love you, Lance.” Keith smiled in his fading state. There were tears falling down his cheeks, though he couldn’t feel them.Lance felt his breath hitch in his throat. He tried to shake his partner awake, though he wouldn’t open his eyes. “I hope that you don’t miss me. The last thing I want is for me to have been the one to have broken your heart.”

Keith tried to reach out and feel Lance’s face for the first and last time with his hand. His fingertips just brushed his cheek, a fraction of the area he wished he could cover. He didn’t have enough time to carry the feeling of it with him, savoring it in the moment. His skin was soft, as he’d expected. It was blistering hot from his fever and coated in sweat but Keith didn’t care. Lance lowered his hand with his own, letting their fingers intertwine for a moment.

Until Keith’s hand fell limp, unable to hold on any longer.

\-------------------------

It was late when the cryopod opened.

Keith stumbled out, with nobody around him to stable his shaky steps. His thoughts were hazy, as if the were still in a dream, unable to grasp onto anything properly. The only thing he had running through his mind was where Lance was right then. Not the fact that he had lived, not the fact that he was okay. He only cared about Lance’s well being. He was the only one who would care as deeply as he did, his affection unable to be topped by a single other person. Keith snuck through the castle as silently as he could, steadying himself on the walls. He decided to make a pit stop before checking in on Lance, sneaking into his room to grab the jacket he’d lent him, careful to be quick about it. Keith had no idea what would come about of being awake right then and he didn’t want to be greeted by comfort from anyone other than Lance.

It felt wrong to hold Lance’s jacket, so he slipped it around him. The cryopod had been warmer than the outside world was, so this stopped his shivering instantly. That fight felt so distant, like it had been years ago. Keith had no way to tell what day it is. How Lance was doing, if he had been thrown into a cryopod too or refused on account of him saying that he was completely better. Bullshit, Keith thought. Cryopods weren’t built to help illnesses anyways, only injuries. There had to be some way that he could help him before he got too bad. He could sneak out and find somewhere to by some medication. That wouldn’t help unless he could diagnose Lance, which Keith couldn’t. He wasn’t trained in the area of intergalactic medicine nor would he ever be. He sort of wished that he was, so that everything would be that much easier for them. He could make Lance better without the team having to give it another thought. There would be no more almost self-sacrifices. No more misfired bullets. They could finally feel peace again, or as much peace as they could feel in the middle of a war as big as the one they were fighting.

“Lance?” Keith called out to the Blue Paladin. He’d been careful to not make too much noise getting in, sliding the door open himself to eliminate the hiss. It was a trick that Lance had taught him after they’d trained late one night. Where he’d learned it, Keith didn’t know. “I’m here to give you back your jacket.”

Lance didn’t so much as stir in his bed. Keith stepped closer, to get a better look at him. His eyes were open, lighting up the ceiling above where his head laid. It startled him at first, jumping back in surprise, but that fear was quickly replaced with concern. Lance was too weak to even move his head to look at him. He sat next to him, leaning his ear on his chest. It was worse than Keith had imagined. His heartbeat was close to nonexistent. Every beat that it managed to push through sounded fainter than the last. Lance was going to die if Keith couldn’t get him out of there. His sheets were drenched in sweat, as were his clothes and his hair. Keith assumed that he must’ve been freezing, though he couldn’t shiver because of the sheer lack of energy he possessed. Without thinking, he threw the sheets off of him and took him in his arm. There was no longer pain where the injury on his chest was. His steps were a bit wobbly still but not wobbly enough to throw him off of balance enough to prevent him from running.

At first, Keith didn’t even know where he was running to. There wasn’t anyone he could go to who would help him that would understand. They would all say that he was overreacting, that Lance wasn’t dying when he had survived lying out under a space storm for god knows how long. Brushing Keith off was normal to them, something that everyone did on instinct. Lance had been the one to try and convince them otherwise, to turn his reputation for throwing out ideas that had little sense out into the world into them having some merit. It was something that Keith would repay him for, regardless of if it pissed the team off. He contemplated taking one of the pods that Pidge had modified but it wouldn’t be fast enough, nor would it have as great of a range of communication as the Red Lion did. So, against all better judgement, he made a makeshift bed for Lance in the back of it, made sure that he wouldn’t fall out, and blasted off into the stars without so much as a clue of where he could possibly go.

“Hello?” Keith called out in his helmet, unsure of if anyone would pick up on his signal. “Is anyone out there? My friend is sick. I don’t know what he has but his eyes are glowing and he’s barely breathing. I think he has a fever, too.”

Silence. It drew on for five minutes. The most painstaking five minutes that Keith had ever lived through. Longer than the five minutes he’d spent sitting on his bed after the police called him to tell him that his dad got into an accident, and would never be coming home again. He had been distanced from his family as a child, so there had been no one there to comfort Keith when he needed it more than anything else. They were longer than the five minutes that it took for the Garrison’s principal to tell him to return any belongings that they had issued him throughout the school year. That he would no longer be attending their institution nor would he ever be allowed to set foot on campus again, all because of the complaints of discipline issues he’d been given by various professors he’d had. Longer than the five minutes he’d spent sitting on the floor of the kitchen, listening in on his dad talk to someone on the phone. About how Keith’s mother had abandoned him, something that the five year old burst into tears upon hearing. His dad had tried to comfort him, scooping him up into his arms, but all he could imagine was the ones of his mother’s, wherever she may have been. Five minutes felt like forever when someone you loved or respected told you something you didn’t want to hear. Five minutes felt like a lifetime when someone close to you was pronounced dead. 

But five minutes dragged on for longer than an eternity when their life was in limbo, and it was up to you to save it.

“Please.” Keith’s voice was broken, from the sobs that he released from his chest, before they forced their way out themselves. “He’s a paladin of Voltron. I am, too. I’m Keith, the paladin of red and he’s Lance, the paladin of blue.”

Keith looked back at Lance. The light from his eyes was no longer there, replaced with the eyelids that Keith had wished would never shut when he was like this, “Someone…please. His eyes are shut and I can’t go back and check to see if he’s breathing. If there’s a hospital around here, someone lead me to it.”

Keith thought that he was going to stop breathing. He couldn’t even think of a world without Lance. “I don’t want him to be the one to break my heart.” 

“I might be able to help you.” A familiar voice sounded over his helmet. Shay. A ship pulled up next to the Red Lion. It was small, similar to the escape pods that the castle had, but it seemed sturdy. “There’s one close to the Balmera. I can take the both of you there. Quickly.”

“Yes.” Keith regained his composure. He had to keep himself strong when he was at his weakest. That was what he’d always told himself. “Thank you so much, Shay. If you could lead the way.”

“Sure thing.” She replied, flashing him a smile from her window.

She took the lead without hesitation, blasting off into the cosmos. Keith sped up and zoomed on right behind her. She hadn’t been joking when she’d said quickly. It was almost funny to Keith. Shay’s personality was as gentle, if not gentler, than Hunk’s. Yet here she was, kicking her ship into highgear to get the two of them to a space hospital somewhere like her life depended on it. There was a life on the line, after all, but it hurt Keith to think about how immediate her kindness and trust had been. Voltron had saved her entire planet but Keith hadn’t been the one to do it himself. The ones who had been by his side did more than he could’ve ever dreamed of doing. Somehow, those very same people were the ones who had the littlest faith in Keith about Lance than she did. Was it wrong? Definitely. In every sense of the word. But she was willing to help them. She was willing to be Lance’s real savior, even if she’d never view herself as one. Keith had to give Hunk credit on that front. He’d found a real gem in this universe.

Just like he had found in Lance.

“Here it is!” Shay cried out happily after what seemed to be a mere seven minutes flying. “I know it doesn’t look like much from the outside but trust me. If there’s anyone in this corner of the universe who could heal Lance, it would be them.”

Shay was right about it not looking like much. It could’ve been mistaken for space trash, if you didn’t take a second glance at it. Keith thought that maybe that was their defense mechanism against anyone who wanted to come after them, Galra or otherwise. The entirety of it fit on the surface of what remained of a long abandoned planet. It was large enough to suffice as a hospital but not large enough to the point of where it could house more than a couple of thousand refugees at a time. Anything was better than nothing to Keith at this point. Shay told him that she’d go on in ahead of him and let them know that they were there, so Keith would have time to set down the Red Lion and check in on how Lance was doing. As soon as they were landed, Keith rushed to the little alcove he had carved out for Lance, filled with sheets and his jacket thrown on top to act as an extra blanket. 

“Lance.” Keith took one of his hands in his own. He could feel Lance try to curl his fingers around it. The motion was faint, fainter than his heartbeat had been earlier, but it was there. “We’re somewhere where we can get you help. I ran into Shay and she led us here. You just have to hang in there a little longer.”

Keith didn’t know what he had been expecting as a response from Lance. There wasn’t any way that he could nod at him or reply with even the weakest of yes’s. He didn’t even have the strength to keep his eyes from closing. Keith didn’t want to have to face the fact that the doctors might not be able to save Lance. That one of them might walk out to wherever he was waiting and deliver the devastating news that, even though they’d done all that they could, they weren’t able to cure him of whatever he was infected with. Would Keith have to be the one to tell the team then that Lance was gone? That he’d snuck out without permission and done all that he could to keep him alive? That he didn’t know. What he did know was that he was squeezing tightly onto Lance’s hand, something that he apologized for before dropping it back to his side, where it laid limp. Everything about him was lifeless, despite there still being a life inside of him. Keith had to believe that Lance would make it. He had to. Keith refused to live in a reality where Lance McClain was dead. That was something that nobody could force him to live through.

“Patient 5E81B5?” A voice called out from behind them, footsteps racing up and into the open lion’s mouth. “Lance? Is there someone named Lance in here?”

“He’s over here.” Keith took a step back so that they could hoist him onto a gurney, wheeling him away with an oxygen mask attached to his face.

Shay appeared once they dissipated, offering her arm out for Keith to take. He did, out of fear of what would happen if he didn’t. The world threatened to spin around him as the two of them walked inside, into the bright white of hospital walls and floors that greeted them with their stark cleanliness. Keith couldn’t find a single difference between this hospital and the one that he had visited after hearing the news of his father’s passing. There was a receptionist’s desk, behind which sat a kind looking alien woman. She reminded Keith of a librarian. Older looking, chubby, grandmotherly, with a pair of wire frame glasses resting upon her nose. She smiled at him as she explained that they had been able to diagnose Lance as soon as he was wheeled through the doors. This smile faded as she told him how slim the chance of his survival was, with the bacteria that infected him being one that was rare to a specific species of alien. Keith could feel his hands balling into fists. As a defense mechanism so that he wouldn’t cry or out of rage towards those Lyran girls, he couldn’t tell. Lyrans were weak in combat. Their voices could only do so much to protect them from their enemies. Because of this, their bodies naturally secreted a poison. This poison had a bacteria that, in large amounts, could enter their victim’s system and kill them immediately.

Only Lance had received a portion of the bacteria. 

The receptionist explained to Keith that her best guess as to what had happened had been that the Lyrans had betted on the fact that his team would notice that something was wrong with Lance. They would figure that it had to have been in the food that he’d eaten while he was there and return to have them cure him. Keith filled in the rest of the blanks himself. They hadn’t been freed from their brainwashing after all. Since they relied on the Galra for centuries, to sustain them when they were running low on resources that they needed in their everyday lives, they joined forces with them in secret. Their plan was to ambush them once they returned, with all of the power that they could throw at them. It made sense. What better way to manipulate someone into doing something than with their emotions? The very ones that had made Keith sneak off in the night with Lance in tow, against all better judgement. The heart was funny like that. It made you do things that you didn’t even realize, until you could think straighter and realize all of the consequences that would come about because of what you did.

“Do you want me to stay with you?” Shay asked, resting her hand on his shoulder. Keith would’ve normally flinched at the affection but it was nice to have someone who cared about him, and who cared about Lance, right then. “I can explain everything to my family when I get back. I just want to make sure that you’re okay.”

“Actually,” Keith smiled at her. He didn’t realize how tiring it was to be surrounded by people who didn’t believe in you until someone else came along who did. “I’d love that.”

The two of them took seats next to each other. These chairs were an upgrade from hospitals back on Earth, Keith could admit. They were plushier, like the ones that sat in the parlors of the rich years ago. Shay was polite and made small talk with Keith that avoided the subject of Lance’s condition entirely. Instead she asked when they’d grown so close, praised him for being brave enough to come out here on his own to save him. Keith had told he that he couldn’t pinpoint an exact time that they had started to grow closer together. It was like he was drawn to him and Lance happened to be drawn to him himself. They attracted each other like magnets was the best way that he could put it. Sometimes, they repelled each other, if they were having an argument about something. Most of the time, it was that they didn’t know what to do without the other there by their side. He thanked her for the compliment, though said that it was nothing. He did things like this all the time. This one being one of the less reckless. Then, she went into a story that turned her voice into that of a soothing mother’s. Keith was asleep before he knew it.

Only to be awoken what seemed like moments later by a nurse calling his name.

Keith jumped out of his seat as soon as he snapped awake, “I’m right here!”

He looked around himself to make sure that he hadn’t bumped into anybody in his spasm of awakening. Shay had long since left. He hoped that he hadn’t offended her by falling asleep in the middle of her story. Maybe that had been her intention all along. Keith had just recovered from a major injury, after all. She might’ve been able to sense it with whatever that Balmeran sense was that they used to communicate with their planet. It could’ve applied to all forms of life, for all he knew. There were butterflies in his stomach as the nurse explained that Lance had recovered faster than anyone normally did from the bacteria that he harbored inside of him. He was awake, too, which meant that there was no hiding from him. Keith had to say what he wanted to say on the spot, to push aside his fears and bite the bullet. What mattered was that Lance was alive. What happened after, not so much.

“Hey.” 

Keith stopped in the doorway when he heard Lance. It was such a relief to hear his voice again, as if the weight that had been pressing down on his shoulders from wondering whether or not there would be enough time to get him to the hospital before whatever was wrong with him took a hold of him completely. It was such an overwhelming feeling that Keith ran to Lance without a second thought, throwing his arms around him. Tears fell onto his pillow before Keith could wipe them away, but Lance didn’t mind. He deserved a good cry after everything they’d gone through in the past week. 

“I’m sorry.” Keith whispered after a while, wiping his jacket sleeve across his eyes. “I just really thought that I might’ve been too late. I didn’t know if you were alright and they wouldn’t tell me anything and-”

“Keith.” Lance made room so that he could sit beside him on the bed. “I’m alive. You saved me. There’s nothing that you need to worry about now.”

“I’m not so sure about that.” Keith looked down at his hands, moving his thumb across his forefinger. “I did kind of take the Red Lion out without letting anyone know. And you, too.”

“Well, maybe the others will be a little pissed off.” Lance grabbed Keith’s hand and held it in his own, squeezing onto it tightly as if he couldn’t believe himself that he had survived. “But you have me to defend you. I’ll be on your side forever. Got that?”

Keith nodded. He managed to squeeze himself into the spot just beside Lance, so that the two of them laid next to each other. His IV was on the left, which made it convenient for Keith, who had climbed in on Lance’s right side. Neither of them had bothered to pull their intertwined fingers apart, blissfully content with the way things were now. It would’ve seemed that way to the nurses who peeked in on them, giggling with their coworkers as they walked off to tend to some other patients. What they couldn’t see, what no one could see, were the walls that Keith had spent years building up threatening to crumble.

All because of one stupidly handsome boy.

“I sorta wish that we hadn’t gone to Lycia.” Keith admitted, finally getting the thoughts that he’d pent up in his mind out in the open. “Then you wouldn’t have met those girls, and flirted with them, and we wouldn’t be here right now.”

“But we saved them.” Lance responded, turning to look him in the eyes. Keith was relieved to notice that the eerie glow of blue that had been there just last night was no longer anywhere in sight. “Isn’t that what matters at the end of the day?”

“They’re not the ones defending the universe, Lance.” Keith’s voice started to rise, gaining the snappiness that it did when he got agitated. “We are. If the team had lost you, we would have had to spent time looking for a replacement, which would’ve cost us more time than we have to spare. Did you seriously think that you could actually date one of them?”

“Obviously I didn’t!” Lance’s voice elevated just enough for Keith to know that he meant business, but not enough to alert the staff outside. “Did you ever bother to think that I was flirting with them to make you jealous?”

“What?” Keith blinked at him, at a loss for words. “Make me jealous?”

“Yes!” Lance broke free of the grip he had on him, throwing his arms up in frustration. “It’s the same with every girl! Why do you think I flirt with Allura when you’re around? Or when I flirted with Nyma?”

“That almost got Blue stolen, remember?” Keith retorted. “Why didn’t you just tell me that you liked me?”

The moment he said that, Keith knew he made a mistake. The way that Lance looked at him was something that he never wanted to see. He was biting his lip back, to ensure that he didn’t cry or yell. Which, Keith couldn’t tell. It was all his fault for not catching onto his roundabout way of trying to get his attention sooner. Even the obvious ways had gone right over his head. One on one training sessions, the constant praising after every mission, the nicknames. All of it had been screaming out at Keith that Lance was wanting to be something more to him. To be the blue to his red. To be the hand that he held when he was scared. To be the one that he could open up to about everything. To be the one that made his heart beat faster than anyone else.

To be his boyfriend.

“Do you know how hard it is to tell someone that you love them?” Lance whispered, eyes welling up with tears. “It isn’t just something that you can blurt out! What if you had rejected me?”

“I would’ve rather you done that than eaten some food contained with a bacteria that almost fucking killed you!” Keith was gripping onto the railing at the side of the bed, in a desperate attempt to not roll out of it. “If I had really hated you, I wouldn’t have bothered to train with you! I wouldn’t have been the one to notice how sick you were getting!”

“So you love me?” Lance blinked the tears from his eyes. 

Keith shifted his weight towards him so that he could wipe them away, “Yes, Lance. I love you.”

“It’s that easy for you to say?” Lance was amazed. Not once had he been able to say that to a single person, not even when he’d felt the same feelings that he did about Keith right now. 

“Three words, Lance.” Keith leaned in closer, leaving a few centimeters of space in between their lips. “I love you. It took me a while to realize it but I don’t doubt it for a second. I mean it. I really love you. That’s why I didn’t want to lose you.”

“I love you, too.” Lance said, closing the gap between them.

Mending Keith’s heart that had been broken for years.


End file.
